V>.-^ l^ow^•l»Vl 



, mm\l 




Country Living 



AND 



Country Thinking 



GA.il HAMILTON 



V 




BOSTON 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS 

I 862 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, by 

TICKNOR AND FIELDS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



2-2, 4 ^ 



1 



university press: 

Welch, Biqelow, and Company, 

Cambridge. 



REFACE. 




KNOW that I can bear censure ; I 
tliink I could endure neglect : but 
there is one thing which I will never 
E^l forgive, and that is, any encroach- 
ment upon my personality. Whatever an au- 
thor puts between the two covers of his book is 
public property ; whatever of himself he does 
not put there is his private property, as much 
as if he had never written a word. I do not 
say, that any information which may be gath- 
ered, or any conjecture which may be hazarded, 
concerning the man or the woman who stands 
behind the mask of the author, may not be a 
lawful theme of conversation, if people are in- 
terested enough to make it so ; but the ap- 
pearance of any such information or conjecture 
in any public print, whether in the form of 
book-notice or news-item, I consider an unpar- 
donable impertinence. 

As this seems to me a matter of serious im- 
portance in the minor moralities, and one in 



iv PREFACE. 

which this people is verily guilty, I desire to be 
clearly understood. If any person writes a book 
or an article, and prefixes his name, he, in a 
manner, makes an unconditional surrender of 
himself The public has perhaps the shadow 
of a right to ascertain and announce his birth- 
place, his residence, his wife, the color of his 
eyes, the length of his beard, the precocity of 
his childhood, the college at which he was grad-; 
uated, the hotel in which he is spending the 
summer months, and similar items — startling, 
if true — which are so dear to the public. But 
if he withholds himself, and writes under the sig- 
nature of Apsby Jones, you, my dear Public, 
have no right or title to him. That is an indi- 
cation that he wishes to remain unknown. You 
should respect his reticence. Though you may 
have heard from your brother-in-law or your 
grandmother that Apsby Jones is a Mr. Jona- 
than Jenkins of Kettleville, refrain scrupulously 
from printing that report ; for, in the first place, 
you have probably been misinformed, — Jona- 
than Jenkins is not the man at all, and is made 
to feel extremely uncomfortable ; and, in the 
second place, if he were the man, it would be 
shamefully impolite in you to rend away the veil 
in which he chose to drape himself You may 
criticise his book to the top of your bent, but 
don't meddle with him. No matter if he was 
your schoolmate, no matter if he descended from 



PREFACE. V 

a French refugee, no matter if he made a speech 
at your picnic ; you be quiet about it, — at least 
till he is dead. Doubtless he was very glad to 
have his book published, but doubtless he has 
insurmountable objections to being published 
himself 

This is a preface, Public, and you will read- 
ily see that I cannot talk as freely as I should 
like, because it will never do to put you in an 
ill-humor at the beginning ; but you must know, 
yourself, that you are very much given to ille- 
gal gossip. You have a cacoctJics printendi. The 
moment you get hold, by fair means or foul, of 
the outermost fibre of the shred of the husk of 
the semblance of a fact, you go straightway and 
put it in the newspapers. You are not so much 
to blame. Your fathers did it before you, and 
I don't suppose you were ever told that it was 
ill-bred ; but it is. Please not do it again. 
Be very sure to know whether the name on the 
title-page is a pen-name or a baptismal name. 
If it is the former, confine your remarks to 
the book and its relations ; if it is the lat- 
ter — you cannot do better than follow the 
same course. 

I most eagerly desire, O Public, your good 
opinion, and especially your friendly feeling. I 
shall count it one of the greatest happinesses 
of my life if I succeed in pleasing you, and one 
of the fjreatest misfortunes if I do not. But 



VI 



PREFACE. 



if you commit this sin against me, I will never 
forgive you ! Or, since that may be unscrip- 
tural, I will forgive you just enough to save 
my own soul, but not enough to be of any use 
to you. 

G. H. 




c 



ONTENTS 



Page 

Moving 3 

The Bank 21 

My Garden 38 

Men and Women 80 

My Birds 206 

Tommy *. . . . 230 

Boston and Home Again 246 

Brown-Bread Cakes 277 

A Complaint of Friends 285 

Dog-Days 311 

Summer Gone 317 

Winter 335 

My Flower-Bed 351 

Lights among the Shadows of our Civil War . 366 



M5| 




Country Living 



AND 



Country Thinking 



Moving. 



n^AN is like an onion. He exists in 
[ concentric layers. He is born a bulb, 
I and grows by external accretions. 
5^?-^^ The number and character of his 
involutions certify to his culture and courtesy. 
Those of the boor are few and coarse. Those 
of the 2;entleman are numerous and fine. But 
strip off the scales from all, and you come to the 
same germ. The core of humanity is barbarism. 
Every man is a latent savage. 

You may be startled and shocked ; but I am 
stating fiict, not theory. I announce not an in- 
vention, but a discovery. You look around you, 
and because you do not see tomahawks and tat- 
tooing you doubt my assertion. But your obser- 
A^ation is superficial. You have not penetrated 
into the secret place where souls abide. You 
are staring only at the outside layer of your 
neighbors : just peel them, and see what you 
will find. 



4 COUNTRY LIVING. 

I speak from the highest possible authority, — 
my own experience. Representing the gentler 
half of humanity, of respectable birth, tolerable 
parts, and good education, as tender-hearted as 
most women, not unfamiliar with the best society, 
mincrlino- to some extent, with those who under- 
stand and practise the minor moralities, you would 
at once infer from my circumstances that I was a 
very fair specimen of the better class of Americans, 
— and so I am. For one that stands higher than 
I in the moral, social, and intellectual scale, you 
will undoubtedly find ten that stand lower. Yet 
through all these layers gleam the fiery eyes of 
my savage. I thought I was a Christian. I have 
endeavored to do my duty to my day and genera- 
tion ; but of a sudden Christianity and civilization 
leave me in the lurch, and the " old Adam " 
within me turns out to be just such a fierce Saxon 
pirate as hurtled down against the white shores 
of Britain fifteen hundred years ago. 

For we have been moving. 

People who live in cities and move regularly 
every year from one good, finished, right-side-up 
house to another, will think I give a very small 
reason for a very broad fact ; but they do not 
know what they are talking about. They have 
fallen into a way of looking upon a house only as 
an exaggerated trunk, into which they pack them- 
selves annually with as much nonchalance as if 
it were only their preparation for a summer trip 



MOVING. 5 

to the sea-shore. They don't strike root any- 
where. They don't have to tear up anytliing. 
A man comes with cart and horses. There is a 
stir in the one honse, — they are gone ; — there is 
a stir in the other honse, — they are settled ; and 
everything is wound up and set going to run an- 
other year. We do these things differently in the 
country. We don't build a house by way of ex- 
periment, and live in it a few years, then tear it 
down and build another. We live in a house till 
it cracks, and then we plaster it over ; then it 
totters, and we prop it up ; then it rocks, and we 
rope it down ; then it sprawls, and we clamp it ; 
then it crumbles, and we have a new underpinning, 
— but keep living in it all the time. To know what 
moving really means, you must move from just such 
a rickety-rackety old farm-house, where you have 
cluno; and o;rown like a funo-us ever since there was 
anything to grow ; — where your life and luggage 
have crept into all the crevices and corners, and 
every wall is festooned with associations thicker 
than the cobwebs, though the cobwebs are pretty 
thick ; — where the furniture and the pictui'es and 
the knick-knacks are so become a part and parcel 
of the house, so grown with it and into it, that 
you do not know they are chiefly rubbish till you 
begin to move them, and they fall to pieces, and 
don't know it then, but persist in packing them 
up and carrying them away for the sake of auld 
lang syne, till, set up again in your new abode, 



6 COUNTRY LIVING. 

you suddenly find that their sacredness is gone, 
their dignity has degraded into dinginess, and the 
faded, patched chintz sofa, that was not only com- 
fortable, but respectable, in the old wainscoted sit- 
ting-room, has suddenly turned into " an object," 
when lang syne goes by the board, and the heir- 
loom is incontinently set adrift. Undertake to 
move from this tumble-down old house, strewn 
thick with the debris of many generations, into a 
tumble-up, peaky, perky, plasteiy, shingly, stary 
new one, that is not half finished, and never will 
be, and good enough for it, and you will perhaps 
comprehend how it is that I find a great crack 
in my life. On the further side are prosperity, 
science, literature, philosophy, religion, society, all 
the refinements, and amenities, and benevolences, 
and purities of life, — in short, all the arts of 
peace, and civilization, and Christianity, — and on 

this side • movino;. You will also understand 

why that one word comprises, to my thinking, all 
the discomforts short of absolute physical torture 
that can be condensed into the human lot. Con- 
densed, did I say ? If it were a condensed agony, 
I could endure it. One great, stunning, over- 
powering blow is undoubtedly terrible, but you 
rally all your fortitude to meet and resist it, and 
when it is over, it is over, and the recuperative 
forces go to work ; but a trouble that worries and 
bafiles and pricks and rasps you, that penetrates 
into all the ramifications of your life, that fills 



MOVING. 7 

you with profound disgust, and fires you with 
irrepressihle fury, and makes of you an Ishmaelite 
indeed, with your hand against every mail, and 
every man's hand against you, — ah ! that is the 
cxperimentum crucis. 

Such is mo\ang, in the country, — not an act, 
but a process, — not a vohtion, but a fermentation. 

We will say that the first of September is the 
time appointed for the transit. The day ap- 
proaches. It is the twenty-ninth of August. I 
prepare to take hold of the matter in earnest. I 
am nipped in the bud by learning that the woman 
who was to help about the carpets cannot come, 
because her baby is taken with the croup. I 
have not a doubt of it. I never knew a baby 
yet that did not go and have the croup, or the 
colic, or the cholera infantum, just when it was 
imperatively necessary that it should not have 
them. But there is no help for it. I shudder, 
and bravely gird myself for the work. I tug at 
the heavy, bulky, unwieldy carpets, and am cov- 
ered with dust and abomination. I think carpets 
are the most untidy, unwholesome nuisances in 
the whole world. It is impossible to be clean 
with them under your feet. You may sweep your 
carpet twenty times, and raise a dust on the 
twenty-first. I am sure I heard long ago of some 
new fashion that was to be introduced, — some 
Italian style, tiles, or mosaic-work, or something 
of the sort. I should welcome anything that 



8 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Avould dispense with these vile rags. I sigh over 
the good old sanded floors that our grandmothers 
rejoiced in, — and so, apotlieosizing the past and 
anathematizing the present, I pull away, and the 
tacks tear my fingers, and the hammer slips and 
lets me back with a jerk, and the dust fills my 
hair and nose and eyes and mouth and lungs, and 
my hands grow red and coarse and fagged and 
sore and begrimed, and I pull and choke and 
cough and strangle and pull. 

So the carpets all come up, and the curtains 
all come down. The bureaus march out of the 
chamber-windows and dance on a tight-rope down 
into the yard below. The chairs are set at " heads 
and points." The clothes are packed into the 
trunks. The flour and meal and sugar, all the 
wholesale edibles, are carted down to the new 
house and stored. The forks are wa-apped up, 
and we eat with our fingers, and have nothing 
to eat at that. Then we are informed that the 
new house will not be ready short of two weeks 
at least. Unavoidable delays. The plasterers 
were hindered ; the painters misunderstood orders ; 
the paperers have defalcated, and the universe 
generally comes to a pause. It is no matter in 
what faith I was nurtured, I am now a believer 
in total depravity. Contractors have no con- 
science ; masons are not men of their word ; car- 
penters are tricky ; all manner of cunning work- 
men are bruised reeds. But there is nothing to 



MOVING. 9 

do but submit and make the best of it, — a hor- 
rible kind of mechanism. We go forthwith into a 
chrysahs state for two weeks. Tlie only sign of 
life is an occasional lurch towards the new house, 
just sufficient to keep up the circulation. One 
day I dreamily carry down a basket of wine- 
glasses. At another time I listlessly stuff all my 
slippers into a huge pitcher, and take up the line 
of march. Again a bucket is filled with tea-cups, 
or I shoulder the fire-shovel. The two weeks 
drag themselves away, and the cry is still, " Un- 
fihished ! " To prevent petrifying into a fossil 
remain, or relapsing into primitive barbarism, or 
degenerating into a dormouse, I rouse my energies 
and determine to put my own shoulder to the 
wheel and see if something cannot be accom- 
plished. I rise early in the morning and walk 
to Dan, to hire a painter who is possessed of 
" gumption," •' faculty." Arrived in Dan, I am 
told he is in Beersheba. Nothing daunted, I take 
a short cut across the fields to Beersheba, bearding 
manifold dangers from rickety stone- walls, strong 
enough to keep women in, but not strong enough 
to keep bears, bulls, and other wild beasts out, — 
toppling enough to play the mischief with dra- 
peries, but not toppling enough to topple over 
when urgently pressed to do so. But I secure 
my man, and remember no more my sorrow of 
bulls and stones for joy at my success. From 
Beersheba I proceed to Padan-aram to buy seven 
1* 



10 COUNTRY LIVING. 

pounds of flour, thence to Galilee of the Gentiles 
for a pound of cheese, thence to the land of Uz 
for a smoked halibut, thence to the ends of the 
earth for a lemon to make life tolerable, — and 
the days hobble on. 

" The flying gold of the ruined woodlands drives 
through the air," the signal is given, and there 
is no longer quiet on the Potomac. The unnat- 
ural calm gives way to an unearthly din. Once 
more I bring myself to bear on the furniture and 
the trumpery, and there is a small household 
wliirlpool. All that went before " pales its in- 
effectual fires." Now comes the strain upon my 
temper, and my temper bends, and quivers, and 
creaks, and cracks. Ithuriel touches me with his 
spear ; all the integuments of my conventional, 
artificial, and acquired gentleness peel off, and I 
stand revealed a savage. Everything around me 
sloughs off its usual habitude and becomes savage. 
Looking-glasses are shivered by the dozen. A bit 
is nicked out of the best China sugar-bowl. A 
pin gets under the matting that is wrapped around 
the centre-table, and jags horrible hieroglyphics 
over the whole polished surface. The bookcase, 
that we are trying to move, tilts, and trembles, 
and goes over, and the old house through all her 
frame gives signs of woe. A crash detonate on 
the stairs brings me up fi'oni the depths of the 
closet where I am burrowing. I remember seeing 
Halicarnassus disappear a moment ago with my 



MOVING. 11 

lovely and beloved marble Hebe in his arms. I 
rush rampant to the upper landing in time to see 
him couchant on the lower. " I have broken my 
leg," roars Halicarnassus, as if I cared for his leg. 
A fractured leg is easily mended ; but who shall 
restore me the nose of my nymph, marred into 
irremediable deformity and dishonor ! 

Occasionally a gleam of sunshine shoots athwart 
the darkness to keep me back from rash deeds. 
Behind the sideboard I find a little cross of dark, 
bright hair, and gold and pearls, that I lost two 
years ago and would not be comforted. O happy 
days woven in with the dark, bright hair ! O 
golden, pearly days, come back to me again ! 
" Never mind your gewgaws," interposes real life ; 
" what is to be done with the things in this 
drawer ? " Lying atop of a heap of old papers 
in the front-yard waiting the match that is to 
glorify them into flame, I find a letter that mys- 
teriously disappeared long since, and caused me 
infinite alarm lest indelicate eyes might see it, and 
indelicate hands make ignoble use of its honest 
and honorable meaning. I learn also sundry new 
and interesting facts in mechanics. I become 
acquainted for the first time with the modus ope- 
randi of "roller-cloths." I never understood be- 
fore how the roller got inside the towel. It was 
one of those gentle domestic mysteries that repel 
even while they invite investigation. I shall not 
give the result of my discovery to the public. If 



12 COUNTRY LIVING. 

you wisli very much to find out, you can move, as 
I did. 

But the rifts of sunshine disappear. The clouds 
draAv together and close in. The savage walks 
abroad once more, and I go to bed tired of life. 

I have scarcely fallen asleep, when I am reluc- 
tantly, by short and difficult stages, awakened. 
A rumbling, grating, strident noise first confuses, 
then startles me. Is it robbers ? Is it an earth- 
quake ? Is it the coming of fate ? I lie rigid, 
bathed in a cold perspiration. I hear the tread of 
banditti on the moaning stairs. I see the flutter 
of ghostly robes by the uncurtained windows. A 
chill, uncanny air rushes in and grips at my damp 
hair. I am nerved by the extremity of my terror. 
I will die of anything but fright. I jerk off the 
bedclothes, convulse into an upright posture, and 
glare into the darkness. Nothing. I rise softly, 
creep cautiously and swiftly over the floor, that 
ahvays creaked, but now thunders at every footfall. 
A light gleams through the open door of the op- 
posite room whence the sound issues. A famihar 
voice utters an exclamation which I recognize. It 
is Halicai-nassus, the unprincipled scoundrel, who 
is uncording a bed, dragging remorselessly through 
innumerable holes the long rope whose doleful wail 
came near giving me an epilepsy. My savage 
lets loose the dogs of war. Halicarnassus would 
fain defend himself by declaring that it is morning. 
I indignantly deny it. He produces his watch. 



MOVING. 13 

A fig for his watch ! I stake my consciousness 
against twenty watches, and go to bed again ; but 
Sleep, angry goddess, once repulsed, retui'ns no 
more. The dawn comes up the sky, and confirms 
the scorned watch. The golden daggers of the 
morning prick in under my eyelids, and Hali- 
carnassus introduces hhnself upon the scene once 
more, to announce, that, if I don't wish to be 
corded up myself, I must abdicate that bed. The 
threat does not terrify me. Indeed, nothing at the 
moment seems more inviting than to be corded up 
and let alone ; but duty still binds me to life, and, 
assuring Halicarnassus that the just law will do 
that service for him, if he does not mend his ways, 
I slowly emerge again- into the world, — the 
dreary, chaotic world, — the world that is never 
at rest. 

And there is hurrying to and fro, and a clang 
of many voices, and the clatter of much crockery, 
and a liftino- and balancino; and batterino; against 
walls, and curving around corners, and sundry 
contusions, and a great waste of expletives, and a 
loading of wagons, and a driving of patient oxen 
back and forth with me generally on the top of the 
load, steadying a basket of eggs with one foot, 
keeping a tin can of something from upsetting 
with the other, and both arms stretched around a 
very big and very square picture-frame that knocks 
against my nose or my chin every time the cart 
goes over a stone or drops into a rut, and the wind 



14 COUNTRY LIVING. 

threatening to blow my hat off, and blowing it off, 
and my "back-hair" tumbling down, — and the 
old house is at last despoiled. The rooms stand 
bare and brown and desolate. The sun, a hand- 
breadth above the horizon, pours in through the 
unblinking windows. The last load is gone. The 
last man has departed. I am left alone to lock up 
tlie house and walk over the liill to the new home. 
Then, for the first time, I remember that I am 
leaving. As I pass through the door of my own 
room, not regretfully, I turn. I look up and down 
and through and through the place where I sliall 
never rest again, and I rejoice that it is so. As I 
stand there, with the red, solid sunshine lying on 
the floor, lying on the walls, unfamiliar in its new 
profusion, the silence becomes audible. In the 
still October evenino; there is an effort in the air. 
The dumb house is striving to find a voice. I feel 
the struiisle of its insensate frame. The old tim- 
bers quiver with the unusual strain. The strong, 
blind, vegetable energy agonizes to find expression, 
and, wrestling like a pinioned giant, the soul of 
matter throws off the weight of its superincumbent 
inertia. Slowly, gently, most sorrowfully through 
the o'olden air cleaves a voice that is somewhat a 
wail, yet not untuned by love. Inarticulate at 
first, I catch only the low mournfulness ; but it 
clears, it concentrates, it murmurs into cadence, it 
syllables into intelligence, and thus the old house 
speaks : — 



MOVING. 15 

" Child, my child, forward to depart, stay for 
one moment your eager feet. Put off from your 
brow the crown which the sunset has woven, and 
linger yet a little longer in the shadow which en- 
shrouds me forever. I remember, in this parting 
hour, the day of days which the tremulous years 
bore in their bosom, — a da^' crimson with the 
woodbine's happy flush, and glowing with the 
maple's gold. On that day a tender, tiny life 
came down, and stately Silence fled before the 
pelting of baby-laughter. Faint memories of far- 
off olden time were softly stirred. Blindly thrilled 
through all my frame a vague, dim sense of swell- 
in o; buds and sin gins-birds and summer-oales, — 
of the purple beauty of violets, the smells of fra- 
grant earth, and the sweetness of summer dews 
and darks. Many a harvest-moon since then has 
filled her yellow horn, and queenly Junes crowned 
with roses have paled before the sternness of De- 
cembers. But Decembers and Junes alike bore 
royal gifts to you, — gifts to the busy brain and 
the awakening heart. In dell and copse and 
meadow and gay green-wood you drank great 
draughts of life. Yet, even as I watched, your 
eyes grew wistful. Your lips framed questions for 
which the Springs found no reply, and the sacred 
mystery of living brought its sweet, uncertain pain. 
Then you went away, and a shadow fell. A gleam 
passed out of the sunshine and a note from the 
robin's song. The knights that pranced on the 



16 COUNTRY LIVING. 

household hearth grew faint and still, and died for 
want of young eyes to mark their splendor. But 
when your feet, ever and anon, turned homeward, 
they used a firmer step, and I knew, that, though 
the path might be rough, you trod it bravely. I 
saw that you had learned how doing is a nobler 
thing than dreaming, yet kept the holy fire burn- 
ing in the holy place. But now you go, and there 
will be no return. The stars are faded from the 
sky. The leaves writhe on the greensward. The 
breezes wail a dirge. The summer rain is pallid 
like winter snow. And — O bitterest cup of all ! 
— the golden memories of the past have vanished 
from your heart. I totter down to the grave, 
while you go on from strength to strength. The 
Junes that gave you life brought death to me, 
and you sorrow not. O child of my tender care, 
look not so coldly on my pain ! Breathe one 
sigh of regret, drop one tear of pity, before we 
part ! " 

The mournful murmur ceased. I am not ada- 
mant. My savage crouched out of sight among 
the underbrush. I think something stirred in the 
back of my eyes. There was even a suspicion of 
dampness in front. I thrust my hand in my 
pocket to have my handkerchief ready in case of a 
catastrophe. It was an unfortunate proceeding. 
My pocket was crammed full. I had to push my 
fingers in between all manner of rubbish, to get at 
the required article, and when I got hold of it, I 



MOVING. 17 

had to pull with all my might to get it out, and 
when it did come, out Avith it came a tin box of 
mustard-seed, a round wooden box of tooth-pow- 
der, a ball of twine, a paper of picture-books, and 
a pair of gloves. Of course, the covers of both 
the boxes came off. The seed scattered over the 
floor. The tooth-powder puffed a white cloud into 
my face. The ball of twine unrolled and trundled 
to the other side of the room. I gathered up what 
I could, but, by the time order was restored and 
my handkerchief ready for use, I had no use for 
it. The stirring in the back of my eyes had 
stopped. The dewiness had disappeared. My 
savage sprang out from the underbrush and bran- 
dished his tomahawk. And to the old house I 
made answer as a Bushman of Caffraria might, or 
a Sioux of the Prae-Pilm-imic Age : — 

" Old House, hush up ! Why do you talk 
stuff? ' Golden memories ' indeed! To hear you, 
one might suppose you were an ivied castle on the 
Rhine, and I a fair-haired princess, cradled in the 
depths of regal luxury, feeding on the blossoms of 
a thousand generations, and heroic from inborn 
royalty. ' Tender care ' ! Did you not wake me 
in the middle of the night, last summer, by trick- 
ling down water on my face from a passing 
shower? and did I not have to get up at that 
unearthly hour to move the bed, and step splash 
into a puddle, and come very near being floated 
away ? Did not the water drip, drip, drip upon 



18 COUNTRY LIVING. 

my w^'iting-desk, and soak the leather, and swell 
the wood, and stam the ribbon, and spoil the paper 
inside, and all because you were treacherous at 
the roof and let it ? Have you not made a perfect 
rattery of yourself, yawning at every possible chink 
and crumbling at the underpinning, and keeping 
me awake night after night by the tramp of a 
whole brigade of the Grand Army that slaughtered 
Bishop Hatto ? Whenever a breeze comes along 
stout enough to make an aspen-leaf tremble, don't 
you immediately go into hysterics, and rock, and 
creak, and groan, as if you were the shell of an 
earthquake ? Don't you shrivel at every window 
to let in the northeasters and all the snow-storms 
that walk abroad ? Whenever a needle, or a pen- 
cil, or a penny drops, don't you open somewhere 
and take it in ? ' Golden memories ' ! Leaden 
memories ! Wooden memories ! Mudden mem- 
ories ! " 

My savage gave a war-whoop. I turned scorn- 
fully. I swept down the staircase. I banged the 
front-door. I locked it with an accent, and 
marched up the hill. A soft sighing breathed past 
me. I knew it was the old house mourning for 
her departing child. The sun had disappeared, 
but the western sky was jubilant in purple and 
gold. The cool evening calmed me. The echoes 
of the war-whoop vibrated almost tenderly along 
the hushed hill-side. I paused on the summit of 
the hill and looked back. Down in the valley 



MOVING. 19 

stood the sorrowful house, tasting the first Lltter- 
ness of perpetual desolation. The maples and the 
oaks and the beech-trees hung out their flaming 
banners. The pond lay dark in the shadow of 
the circling hills. The years called to me, — the 
happy, sun-ripe years that I had left tangled in 
the apple-blossoms, and moaning among the pines, 
and tinkling in the brook, and floating in the cups 
of the water-lilies. They looked up at me from 
the orchai'd, dark and cool. They thrilled across 
from the hill-tops, glowing still with the glowing- 
sky. I heard their voice by the lilac-bush. They 
smiled at me under the peach-trees, and where 
the blackberries had ripened against the southern 
wall. I felt them once more in the clover-smells 
and the new-mown hay. They swayed again in 
the silken tassels of the crisp, rustling corn. They 
hummed with the bees in the garden-borders. 
They sang with the robins in the cherry-trees, 
and their tone was tender and passing sweet. 
They besought me not to cast away their memory, 
for despite of the black-browed troop whose vile 
and sombre robes had mingled in with their silver 
garments. They prayed me to forget, but not all. 
They minded me of the sweet counsel we had 
taken together, when summer came over the hills, 
and walked by the water-courses. They bade me 
remember the good tidings of great joy which they 
had brought me when my eyes were dim with 
unavailing tears. My lips trembled to their call. 



20 



COUNTRY LIVING. 



The war-whoop chanted itself into a vesper. A 
happy calm lifted from my heart and quivered 
out over the valley, and a comfort set- 
tled on the sad old house, as I 
stretched forth my hands, and 
from my inmost soul 
breathed down a 
Benedicite ! 



The Bank. 




E had much ado to get it, but it was 
lovely when it was done. The glory 
of it belongs to me. Halicarnassus, I 
|2<^ I'egret to say, to many amiable quali- 
ties does not add executive and comprehensive en- 
ergy. He occasionally develops very satisfactorily 
in some one direction, but I have yet to see him 
become complete master of any situation. He 
does one thing, but he leaves twenty undone. So 
it was in keeping with his character to hibernate 
on the top of a gravel-heap. When I suggested, 
in the fall, that the gravel-heap be immediately 
graded and turfed, he replied that there were too 
many things Avhich must be done before winter set 
in. When winter had set in, and the things were 
all done, and I repeated my suggestion, there was 
no turf to be had, — nothing but snow and ice. 
When the spring sun came and drank up the 
snow, and the turf sprouted and thickened and 
matted, and I spoke of the bank, everybody, ac- 
cording to Halicarnassus, was absorbed in plough- 



22 COUNTRY LIVING. 

ing and planting, and could not be lured away 
to do our work. " Besides," he added, " it is 
very well as it is. Gravel has more character 
than grass. Gravel suggests strength. Grass is 
but a smooth commonplace. Gravel is geological 
and antiquitous. It carries one back to the drift 
formation and a wilderness of waters. Grass is 
a modern arrangement. Gravel is the naked in- 
nocence of Earth. Grass is the recourse of sin- 
born Shame." I let him go on, putting a curb 
to my lips. If there is anything that tries my 
temper, it is to have Halicarnassus philosophize. 
When he confines himself to facts and syllogisms, 
he is comparatively harmless ; but the moment he 
strikes out into moral reflection he becomes a nui- 
sance. He does not often do it, I allow. A cer- 
tain blind instinct teaches him to cling to the earth, 
and not attempt waxen wings. So I only smiled. 
If I had refuted him, he would have gone on till 
this time. I knew better. His theory was impro- 
vised on the spot to suit his facts, and the facts 
were culpable indifference and negligence, which 
no theory could convert into cardinal virtues. I 
was silent, and recalled to mind my experience 
in the fall, and the story in the Young Reader. 
When the farmer announced his intention to reap 
his field himself, the mother-bird concluded it 
was time to take her nurslings and go. I deter- 
mined to see what my own efforts might do to- 
wards a bank, and, without consulting Halicar- 



THE BANK. 23 

nassus, I walked ten miles one morning, and se- 
cured a man. A man is an indispensable thing 
in the country. He was represented to me as an 
excellent gardener, if he could be kept sober. He 
thought he could make the bank in a week, and 
lie promised me faithfully that he would not be 
drunk once in all the time. Nor was he. You 
may be sure I plied him with strong coffee and 
highly-spiced meats, and he did his work in the 
most beautiful manner. Exultation and admira- 
tion filled my heart as I saw the gravel begin to 
haul, the loam topple over upon it, the turf trundle 
down upon a wheelbarrow and square itself upon 
the loam, and a shapely terrace rise slowly from 
the chaos of debris. Halicarnassus enjoyed it too. 
He enjoys things if he is not forced to originate 
them. It is the first step which costs him. He 
would live in a palace with great delight, if he 
woke one mornino; and found himself in it ; but he 
would live in a cave many years before he could 
bring himself to plan and construct even a log- 
cabin. So he stood by me, and we marked the 
unsightly gravel-heap transfigured into a sightly 
bank, and watched the lowering clouds, and hoped 
it would not rain. Prematiare rain would wash 
away the loose turf and loam, and many hopes, 
and several dollars, and it was already getting late 
in the season. If it only would keep off just long 
enough to get the slope finished so that the 
whole should not be carried away and the work 



24 COUNTRY LIVING. 

have to be done quite over again ! It looked as 
if it would " pour " every minute. We watched 
the menacing sky, and the gardener wielded his 
knife and line and fingers and wheelbarrow, and 
the slope was finished, and it did not rain, and we 
breathed again. The next day wore away, and 
the next, and the next, and the corners were 
rounded, and the top met the slope in grassy em- 
brace, and it did not rain. How pretty the bank 
looked ; how like the smooth skin veiling and 
adorning the hideous skeleton was the verdant 
velvet that soothed away the rough gravel. Then 
we were ready for the rain. Indeed, we desired 
rain to cherish the tender little rootlets of the 
transplanted grass. We longed for rain to keep 
the turf from cracking and crumbling away. But 
it did not rain. The green turned gray in patches. 
The gray struggled for a while, gave up the ghost, 
and dust reigned in its stead. O, if it would only 
rain ! We talked of warm showers, and the pat- 
tering of drops through the cool night, and the 
new life that would spring under our feet in the 
morning. But it did not rain. Then we talked 
of watering-pots, and available light buckets, and 
we put our shoulders to the wheel, and our hands 
to the pump, and gave the thirsty and dead and 
dying grass a thorough drenching. And it did 
not rain. The evening and the morning came, 
and it was the third and fourth and fifth day, till 
we ceased to count, but poured our morning and 



THE BANK. 25 

evening libations "svitli a silent, sad persistence, 
and there was no rain. 

Halicarnassus was very aggravating. He pre- 
tended great solicitude for the bank. I think he 
would have been sorry to see it relapse into chaos. 
But did he go to work with all his might to pre- 
vent it ? Not he. He made every one think he 
did. He talked, and — that was all. He did not 
do a penny's-worth of good. He grew tired of 
pumping and carrying water after the second day. 
He knew that my interest was too deeply enlisted 
to permit me to slacken my exertions. He knew 
that, if he did not work, I would,. and he accord- 
ingly shirked. " That bank must be watered, or 
it will die ! " he would exclaim, with a great show 
of efficiency. " Yes," I would answer, " let us 
go and water it at once." " Very well. But I 
have my cows to feed just now. Do you begin, 
and I will presently join you." And that would 
be the last of him. When it was all over, and I 
resting on the sofa, he would lounge in and pro- 
fess great astonishment. " I came to help you, 
but you had finished," he would say. Generally 
my sole reply was a steady glance, before which 
he quailed and retreated, though striving to hide 
his real feelings under a laugh. Sometimes, by 
skilful diplomacy, I succeeded in forcing him to 
draw half a dozen buckets of water, but it was a 
great deal harder to work him than it was the 
pump, though that creaked and wheezed and 

2 



26 COUNTRY LIVING. 

spouted out a stream not much bigger than a 
knitting-needle, and 1 presently gave him over 
as incorrigible. The chief hand he had in the 
matter was to exacerbate me by talking before 
friends about our efforts to save the bank, and by 
calling out, as he passed to and fro, " You are 
putting on more water there than you need," or, 
" You are leaving this corner quite dry," or, 
" Here, bring your watering-pot this way." It 
was bad enough not to have him take hold and 
help me, but it was infuriating to have him come 
and order me about. The only satisfaction left 
was to do the opposite thing to that which he 
directed. I do not think he minded it at all. He 
certainly did not issue fewer orders. His only 
object was to keep up appearances. 

As I waA'ed my watering-pot hither and thitlier, 
it seemed to me less strange that the old heathen 
nations should have believed in two Deities, — one 
of good and the other of evil, — Odin, the All- 
Father, and Surtur, the black one ; I had to bring 
the faith" of eighteen centuries to bear on the point, 
and even then I was not so patient as I should 
have been. It might easily seem as if a good 
being were trying to send rain, tliat grass might 
grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of 
man. It did try very hard to rain. Every sign 
was favorable. The clouds were black and big. 
In their bulgino; bosoms yovi could almost see the 
tender grass-blades, and the young peas, and the 



THE BANK. 27 

waving of the asparagus tops, that their scattered 
treasures were going to bring forth. A night 
comes and goes leaving the earth thirsty and dew- 
less. That is a sign of rain. Innumerable worms 
bore up to the surface and throw out little mounds 
of soil. The fire runs up the outside of the tea- 
kettle. Everything happens hut rain, and lo ! 
there it comes ! I felt a drop on my chin — I 
think ; and certainly there another fell on my 
nose. No, the clouds roll off, the worms creep 
back again, the fire stays in the stove, the sun 
comes out. The evilly-disposed one is victorious, 
and there is no rain. 

Is there not some malicious sprite who stirs up 
the Avind every night and morning when I want 
to water the bank ? It is Avork enough at best to 
draAV the Avater and carry it thirty yards and put 
it on, but in addition the Avind rises. If I stand 
opposite, it whisks my dress into the Avater. If 
I face it, it whisks the water against my dress. 
In either case I am drenched, and then the dust 
comes, and I am muddy. Just noAv a puff wrapped 
my skirt directly and tightly around the spout 
from Avhose fifty orifices the water was pouring, 
and in a moment I Avas dripping. Have we not 
a Surtm" among us ? 

If we could stand off someAvhere, and look at 
creation as a whole, — that is, if Ave could occupy 
the stand-point of the Supreme Being, or even, 
perhaps, of the archangels, we should undoubtedly 



28 COUNTRY LIVING. 

say no without hesitation. We should see a grand- 
eur in the conception of the universe, a skill in 
execution, a perfect adaptation of all means to the 
wisest end, such as could spring only from One 
Being, and he the perfection of wisdom and of 
power. We should see everything ministering 
to a common purpose, circling around a common 
centre. Innumerable worlds sweep down the sky 
in their appointed paths, and there is no accident. 
The music of the spheres has not a jar of discord. 
Within each world, doubtless, the same harmony 
prevails. The microcosm is but the macrocosm 
in miniature. Minuteness, as unerringly as vast- 
ness, points to one God. Nothing is done in vain. 
Nothincr does what it was not made to do. What 
seems destruction is construction. What seems 
decay is growth. Disturbance is re-arrangement. 
Death is but the unfolding of a higher life. 

But it certainly seems to me that, judging sim- 
ply from what we see, we should, to say the least, 
be a very long while in arriving at this truth. 
We learn from Revelation that there is but one 
God, and then we take things as they are, and 
group them around that central truth, and make 
them " fadge." Revelation laying down the theo- 
rem, we press creation into the proof; but the 
unassisted human mind has always found great 
difficulty in obtaining the unity of God as the 
solution of the problem of creation. Without 
Revelation, that sublime and simple truth seems 



THE BANK. 29 

but blindly written on the sky and the rocks, — 
seems, I say, — not that it is so written, but our 
unenlightened eyes would scarcely see more dis- 
tinctly than did those Christ-anointed eyes of old, 
to whom men were but as trees walking. We 
should naturally suppose that, if the universe were 
the thought of one mind, and the work of one 
hand, and that mind infinite in wisdom, and that 
hand infinite in power, there would be everywhere 
harmony, order, symmetry, finish. There would 
be no clashing, no incompleteness, no incompati- 
bility, but, as a matter of fact, there are all these. 
And the theory which we should naturally form 
would, I should think, be, that there are at least 
two Deities, one indeed stronger than the other, 
but not stroncr enouo;li to hold the other in com- 
plete subjection, — not Omnipotent, not therefore 
God. High and low, there seem to be indications 
of two powers at work, — one a benevolent, and 
one a malevolent one. In the sky, the planets 
and the stars come from the kindly and wise hand 
of the former. Grave and steadfast, they move 
on their mighty paths with mathematical accuracy 
and royal majesty. But of a sudden, from some 
unexpected quarter, a herd of comets is let loose 
among them, and the tricksy, capricious sprites go 
bobbing in here, there, and everywhere, doubling, 
turning, and pirouetting around the stately mon- 
archs of the sky ; irreverent and elfish ; now hit- 
ting Herschel a box on the ear, now giving Mer- 



30 COUNTRY LIVING. 

cuiy a flap with their tails, and away again before 
those dignified veterans have recovered from their 
surprise enough to look about them ; now getting 
entangled with the satellites of Jupiter, and now 
whirling off on the double-quick through illimit- 
able space ; now rushing head-foremost straight 
into the sun, and now careening over, and right 
about face again ; dashing in helter-skelter among 
the sober old planets, threatening to hurtle against 
our own little earth, and turn everything topsy- 
turvy ; curvetting and prancing among the startled 
worlds ; reined in just enough to feel the bit, but 
not by any means enough to give a sense of secu- 
rity to the well-behaved citizens of the Stellar 
Republic. 

And how came the world that lay between Mars 
and Jupiter to be broken into inch pieces, each 
one setting up an orbit, and dashing around on its 
own account? And who gave a wrong twirl to 
the moons of Uranus, and sent them spinning furi- 
ously backward instead of forward ? And whence 
came the torch that set fire to the star in Cassio- 
peia ? And what is become of the lost Pleiad ? 
And did not the new star that Tycho Brahe found 
the peasants staring at, run a career that looked 
very much as if some emulous and jealous poAver 
had tried his bungling hand at world-making, and 
succeeded so far as to set it going, but could nei- 
ther guide nor stop it, and so it flamed and flared, 
and staggered, and burned out ? And is not some 



THE BANK. 31 

force continually trying to make tlie moon fall 
into the earth, and the earth fall into the sun, 
and things in general crash together and come 
to grief? 

We descend from the splendid, shining heavens 
to our own homely, dingy, brown little world, and 
find ourselves plunged at once into a strong and 
rapid current going one way, with a strong and 
rapid current in the midst of it going the other, 
which of course does not make smooth sailing. 
Everything seems to be conducted on the princi- 
ple, " If you cannot do as you would, do as you 
can." It is all defect and compensation. It is as 
if the powerful and benevolent Being had intended 
to make everything on a perfect scale, and that 
the malevolent and less powerful, but still mighty 
Being, had struck in and marred it all, and then 
the first Being had made up the deficiency with 
marvellous skill and kindness, but not so as quite 
to conceal the deficiency. There is the ostrich that 
set out to be a bird, but had its wings nipped in the 
bud, and is only partially compensated for the loss 
by a most extraordinary pair of legs. There is the 
kangaroo, with his fore legs too short to signify, and 
his hind legs as much too long, and who is conse- 
quently unable to walk, but manages to get on in 
the world jt^gr saltum, — by extensive leaps. 

Worse than this is the horrible rapacity, voracity, 
and violence that crops out everywhere. The 
whole animal kingdom seems to be impelled by 



32 ' COUNTRY LIVING. 

two main motives, — to eat and not to be eaten. 
The cat lies in wait for the mouse, and the dog 
falls foul of the cat. The spider catches the fly, 
and the chicken snaps up the spider, and the hawk 
swoops away with the chicken. The alligator 
lays its eggs, and the vulture goes and devours 
them. The ant-lion decimates a whole colony of 
ants. The ocean is a scene of constant guerilla 
warfare. The big fishes eat the little ones, the 
little ones eat the less, and they all eat each other. 
The whale gulps down at one mouthful more in- 
dividuals than there are men, women, and chil- 
dren in Massachusetts. 

Everything that is beautiful is veined with some- 
thing that is not.. The country smiles with vine- 
yards and orchards, and an earthquake comes and 
swallows them up, or a volcano bursts, and blasts 
and buries them forever. It is a fair land of 
orange and pomegranate, of gorgeous flowers, bril- 
liant birds, and magnificent beasts, but spiders as 
big as sparrows, and centipedes whose touch is 
death. The grand and solemn sea, invaluable for 
communication, essential to life, soft under the 
serene sky, sweet with the breath of the spice 
islands nestling in its bosom, is treacherous and 
hostile even in its friendship, nursing and nour- 
ishing in its hidden depths the whale which shall 
smite your boat to fragments, and the cuttle-fish 
that shall drag it down, and the shark that shall 
swallow you when you get there. 



THE BANK. 33 

Now it certainly seems to me that, without Rev- 
elation, these things would be absolutely incompre- 
hensible, and that the most probable hypothesis 
would be that which so many pagan creeds set 
forth, — that there is a Good One and an Evil 
One, — an hypothesis which is indeed a shadow, 
perhaps I ought rather to say, a rough likeness, of 
the facts. It is the God and the Devil of Chris- 
tianity, dimly revealed by creation, and distorted 
by man's disturbed medium. We must believe, 
because Paul affirms it, that God has revealed him- 
self clearly enough to make us without excuse for 
not glorifying him as God ; but, if not from our 
.original constitution, then from our original sin, 
we did, and do, stand very much in need of this 
direct verbal revelation to show us that his unity 
is not trenched upon by the signs of duality that 
appear in his works, that the good is supreme, and 
the evil under subjection. With that fact laid 
down in the Bible, and a general explanation of 
the apparently antagonistic fact, we can adjust the 
shreds of facts that come under our observation, 
and establish harmony. Given this vertebral 
truth, our little branch truths join on, and there 
is a plan and a Planner. But without this I fear 
we should stumble grievously, as most unassisted 
minds have stumbled. Standing in the very thick 
of creation, it is difficult for us to take in its great 
wholeness. Mrs. Browning tells us that, if Mount 
Athos had been 

2* c 



34 COUNTRY LIVING. 

" carved, as Persian Xerxes schemed, 
To some colossal statue of a man, 
The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear, 
Had guessed as little of any human form 
Up there, as would a flock of browsing goats. 
They 'd have, in fact, to travel ten miles off 
Or ere the giant image broke on them 
Full human profile." 

So it seems to me that we must have some dis- 
tant stand-point, furnished by God in the natural 
course of his providence, or by a verbal revelation, 
before we can read in the record of His works His 
absolute omnipotence and unity. Even with rev- 
elation, we cannot always reconcile discrepancies. 
Our fragment of knowledge does not enable us to 
construct a system free from doubt. The exist- 
ence of evil is still an unsolved problem. The 
ultimatum of reason and science is an " if." We 
fall back on faith, and the reassurance of Divine 
Love is, " What thou knowest not now, thou shalt 
know hereafter." 

Trusting in that Divine love, we take in all the 
baflflings and buffetings of life, yet feel in our in- 
most hearts, and shout with exultant voices : — 

The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Halle- 
lujah. He giveth and keepeth back. He holds 
the deep in the hollow of his hand, and giving 
does not impoverish him, neither does withholding 
enrich him. He could give us little sprinklings 
or great rains if he chose. When he does not, 
there must be some reason for it. Perhaps one 
object is to show us that we ought to turn our 



THE BANK. 35 

attention to modes of artificial irrigation. We are 
very ignorant and careless about that, we almost 
entirely " let time and chance determine." God 
gives us plenty of water in the course of the year, 
but it belongs to us to distribute it properly. That 
is the way God does give us things generally, — 
not the whole, but the basis. We must work its 
completion. There is plenty of iron, but we must 
dig for it, — plenty of salt, but we must separate it 
from the brine, — plenty of bread, but it does not 
grow in loaves. I wish people who have inventive 
genius would bestir themselves. I haven't; but 
I should like a little rain now and then. 

I dare say another reason is to try our patience, 
and also make it stronger. We have not all of us 
a bank, but a good many of us have peas, and 
beans, and lettuce, and morning-glory, and asters, 
and young apple-trees, in which we feel a tender 
interest. Can we see them dying of thirst, rolling 
their tender leaves in parched distress, and yet be 
quite calm and sweet-tempered, — remember that 
the Lord has plenty of rain, and yet not be impa- 
tient or fret because he does not choose to bestow 
it? If there is any Achan in the camp whose 
discontent keeps blessings from us, let him make 
confession and repent. Let us all be content and 
glad without rain, if so be the Lord will give us 
here a little and there a little. 

Meanwhile there are many things to be grateful 
for. Once in a Avhile a heavy dew comes through 



S6 COUNTRY LIVING. 

the drought, and the earth smiles in the early 
morning. Dew is beautiful in poetry, but more 
beautiful .on banks when there is no rain. How 
grateful should we be if our wells do not give out, 
for then not only the grass, but we should suf- 
fer, — grateful, too, if our neighbors' wells do not 
fail, for then they would come to ours, and bank 
and gardens would go thirsty. For men and wo- 
men and little children must be served, even if 
banks go by tlie board. Then, too, it is so pleas- 
ant to take care of erass. It is so strong and 
helpful and thankful. Flowers have a languish 
ing, drooping air, as if they would about as soon 
die as live, if it 's all the same to you ; but the 
grass is sturdy. It makes a desperate struggle for 
existence. It pulls and tugs away at its little 
thread of life with a forty-horse power. When 
it is faint, and almost despairing, give it three 
drops of water, and it starts up again, and is at it, 
good as new. Every morning it winks and blinks 
up at you cheerily, as much as to say, " Here I 
am.' Reckon on me. If I was born to be hay, 
I 'm determined not to die grass. Just you do 
your part, and you may be sure I will do mine ! " 
Dear old grass, I knew you would, though you 
did look very crisp and bunchy and desperate. 
I kept faith in you, and you kept faith with me ; 
holding your own till the windows of heaven were 
opened, and then softening and strengthening into 
beauty and vigor and velvet verdancy. Now 



THE BANK. 



37 



your deft blades cleave the air. Your clover- 
heads breathe fragrance from their white and 
purple loveliness. Your saucy buttercups 
flash back his rays to the summer 
sun, and through your fairy 
forests I hear the 
hum of many 
a bee. 



My Garden. 




CAN speak of it calmly now; but 
there have been moments when the 
lightest mention of those words would 
sway my soul to its profoundest depths. 
I am a woman. You may have inferred this 
before ; but I now desire to state it distinctly, 
because I like to do as I would be done by, when 
I can just as well as not. It rasps a person of my 
temperament exceedingly to be deceived. When 
any one tells a story, we wish to know at the 
outset whether the story-teller is a man or a wo- 
man. The two sexes awaken two entirely distinct 
sets of feelings, and you would no more use the 
one for the other than you would put on your tiny 
teacups at breakfast, or lay the carving-knife by 
the butter-plate. Consequently it is very exasper- 
ating to sit, open-eyed and expectant, watching the 
removal of the successive swathings which hide 
from you the dusky glories of an old-time prin- 
cess, and, when the unrolling is over, to find it 
is nothing, after all, but a great lubberly boy. 



31 Y GARDEN. 39 

Equally trying is it to feel your interest clusterino- 
round a narrator's manhood, all your individuality 
merging in his, till, of a sudden, by the merest 
chance, you catch the swell of crinoline, and there 
you are. Away with such clumsiness ! Let us 
have everybody christened before we begin. 

I do, therefore, with Spartan firmness, depose 
and say that I am a woman. I am aware that I 
place myself at signal disadvantage by the avowal. 
I fly in the face of hereditary prejudice. I am 
thrust at once beyond the pale of masculine svm- 
pathy. Men will neither credit my success nor 
lament my failure, because they will consider me 
poaching on their manor. If I chronicle a big 
beet, they will bring forward one twice as large. 
If I mourn a deceased squash, they will mutter, 
" Woman's farming ! " Shunning Scylla, I shall 
perforce fall into Charybdis. ( Vide Classical 
Dictionary. I have lent mine, but I know one 
was a rock and the other a whirlpool, though I 
cannot state, with any definiteness, which was 
which.) I may be as humble and deprecating as 
I choose, but it will not avail me. A very agony 
of self-abasement will be no armor against the 
poisoned shafts which assumed superiority will 
hurl against me. Yet I press the arrow to my 
bleeding heart, and calmly reiterate, I am a wo- 
man. 

The full magnanimity of which reiteration can 
be perceived only when I inform you that I could 



40 COUNTRY LIVING. 

easily deceive you, if I chose. There is about 
my serious style a vigor of thought, a comprehen- 
siveness of view, a closeness of logic, and a terse- 
ness of diction, commonly supposed to pertain only 
to the stronger sex. Not wantino- in a certain fan- 
ciful sprightliness which is the peculiar grace of 
woman, it possesses also, in large measure, that 
concentrativeness which is deemed the peculiar 
strength of man. Where an ordinary woman 
will leave the beaten track, wandering in a thou- 
sand little by-ways of her own, — flowery and 
beautiful, it is true, and leading her airy feet to 
" sunny spots of greenery " and the gleam of 
golden apples, but keeping her not less surely 
from the goal, — I march straight on, turning 
neither to the right hand nor to the left, beguiled 
into no side-issues, discussing no collateral ques- 
tion, but with keen eye and strong hand aiming 
right at the heart of mv theme. Judge thus of 
the stern severity of my virtue. There is no 
heroism in denying ourselves the pleasures which 
we cannot compass. It is not self-sacrifice, but 
self-cherishing, that turns the dyspeptic alderman 
away from turtle-soup and the pdte de foie gras 
to mush and milk. The hungry newsboy, regal- 
ing his nostrils with the scents that come up from 
a subterranean kitchen, does not always know 
whether or not he is honest, till the cook turns 
away for a moment, and a steaming joint is within 
reach of his yearning fingers. It is no credit to 



MY GARDEN. 41 

a weak-minded woman not to be strong-minded and 
write poetry. She could not if she tried ; but to 
feed on locusts and. wild honey that the soul may 
be in better condition to fight the truth's battles, — 
to go with empty stomach for a clear conscience' 
sake, — to sacrifice intellectual tastes to womanly 
duties, when the two conflict, — 

" That 's the true pathos aud sublime, 
Of human life." 

You will, therefore, no longer withhold your ap- 
preciative admiration, when, in full possession of 
what theologians call the power of contrary choice, 
I make the unmistakable assertion that I am a 
woman. 

Hope told a flattering tale when, excited and 
happy, but not sated with the gayeties of a sojourn 
among urban and urbane friends, I set out on my 
triumphal march from the city of my visit to the 
estate of my adoption. Triumphal indeed ! My 
pathway was strewed with roses. Feathery as- 
paragus and the crispness of tender lettuce waved 
dewy greetings from every railroad-side ; green 
peas crested the racing waves of Long Island 
Sound, and unnumbered carrots of gold sprang 
up in the wake of the ploughing steamer ; till 
I was wellnigh drunk with the new wine of my 
own purple vintage. But I was not ungenerous. 
In the height of my innocent exultation, I re- 
membered the dwellers in cities who do all their 
gardening at stalls, and in my heart I determined, 



42 COUNTRY LIVING. 

when the season should be fully blown, to hivite 
as many as my house could hold to share with me 
the delight of plucking strawberries from their 
stems and drinkino- in foaming health from the 
balmy-breathed cows. Moreover, in the exuber- 
ance of my joy, I determined to go still further, 
and despatch to those doomed ones who cannot 
purchase even a furlough from burning pavements 
baskets of fragrance and sweetness. I pleased my- 
self with pretty conceits. To one who toils early 
and late in an official Sahara, that the home-atmos- 
phere may always be redolent of perfume, I would 
send a bunch of long-stemmed white and crimson 
rose-buds, in the midst of which he should find a 
dainty note whispering, " Dear Fritz : drink this 
pure glass of my overflowing June to the health 
of weans and wife, not forgetting your unforgetful 
friend." To a pale-browed, sad-eyed woman, who 
flits from velvet carpets and broidered flounces to 
the bedside of an invalid mother whom her slender 
fingers and unslender and most godlike devotion 
can scarcely keep this side the pearly gates, I 
would heap a basket of summer-hued peaches 
smiling up from cool, green leaves into their 
straitened home, and with eyes, perchance, tear- 
dimmed, she should read, " My good Maria, the 
peaches are to go to your lips, the bloom to your 
cheeks, and the gardener to your heart." Ah 
me ! How much grace and gladness may bud 
and blossom in one little garden ! Only three 



MY GARDEN. 43 

acres of land, but what a crop of sunny surprises, 
unexpected tenderness, grateful joys, hopes, loves, 
and restful memories ! — what wells of happiness, 
what sparkles of mirth, what sweeps of summer in 
the heart, what glimpses of the Upper Country ! 

Halicarnassus was there before me (in the gar- 
den, I mean, not in the spot last alluded to). It 
has been the one misfortune of my life that Hali- 
carnassus got the start of me at the outset. With 
a fair field and no favor I should have been quite 
adequate to him. As it was, he was born and 
began, and there was no resource left to me but 
to be born and follow, which I did as fast as pos- 
sible ; but that one false move could never be 
redeemed. I know there are shallow thinkers 
who love to prate of the supremacy of mind over 
matter, — who assert that circumstances are plastic 
as clay in the hands of the man who knows how 
to mould them. They clench their fists, and in- 
flate their lungs, and quote Napoleon's proud 
boast, — " Circumstances ! I make circumstances ! " 
Vain babblers ! Whither did this Napoleonic idea 
lead ? To a barren rock in a waste of waters. 
Do we need St. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe 
to refute it ? Control circumstances ! I should 
like to know if the most important circumstance 
that can happen to a man is not to be born ? and 
if that is under his control, or in any way affected 
by his whims and wishes ? Would not Louis 
XVI. have been the son of a goldsmith, if he 



44 COUNTRY LIVING. 

could have had his way ? Would Burns have 
been born a slaving, starving peasant, if he had 
been consulted beforehand ? Would not the chil- 
dren of vice be the children of virtue, if they 
could have had their choice ? and would not the 
whole tenor of their lives have been changed there- 
by ? Would a good many of us have been born 
at all, if we could have helped it? Control cir- 
cumstances, forsooth ! when a mother's sudden 
terror brings an idiot child into the world, — when 
the restive eye of his great-grandfather, whom he 
never saw, looks at you from your two-year-old, 
and the spirit of that roving ancestor makes the 
boy also a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth ! 
No, no. We may coax circumstances a little, 
and shove them about, and make the best of them, 
but there they are. We may try to get out of 
their way ; but they will trip us up, not once, 
but many times. We may affect to tread them 
under foot in the daylight, but in the night-time 
they will turn again and rend us. All we can 
do is first to accept them as facts, and then reason 
from them as premises. We cannot control them, 
but we can control our own use of them. We 
can make them a savor of life unto life, or of 
death unto death. 

Application. — If mind could have been su- 
preme over matter, Halicarnassus should, in the 
first place, have taken the world at second-hand 
from me, and, in the second place, he should not 



MY GARDEN. 45 

have stood smiling on the front-door steps when 
the coach set me down there. As it was, I made 
the best of the one case by following in his foot- 
steps, — not meekly, not acquiescently, but pro- 
testing, yet following, — and of the other, by smil- 
ing responsive and asking pleasantly, — 

" Are the things planted yet ? " 

" No," said Halicarnassus. 

This was better than I had dared to hope. 
When I saw him standing there so complacent 
and serene, I felt certain that a storm was brewing, 
or rather had brewed, and burst over my garden, 
and blighted its fair prospects. I was confident 
that he had gone and planted every square inch of 
the soil with some hideous absurdity, which would 
spring up a hundred-fold in perpetual reminders 
of the one misfortune to which I have alluded. 

So his ready answer gave me relief, and yet 
I could not divest myself of a vague fear, a sense 
of coming thunder. In spite of my endeavors, 
that calm, clear face would lift itself to my view as 
a mere " weather- breeder " ; but I ate my supper, 
unpacked my trunks, took out my papers of pre- 
cious seeds, and, sitting in the flooding sunlight 
under the little western porch, I poured them into 
my lap, and bade Halicarnassus come to me. He 
came, I am sorry to say, with a pipe in his mouth. 

" Do you wish to see my jewels ? " I asked, 
looking as much like Cornelia as a little woman 
somewhat inclined to dumpiness can. 



46 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Halicarnassus nodded assent. 

" There," said I, unrolling a paper, " that is 
Lychnidea acuminata. Sometimes it flowers in 
white masses, pure as a baby's soul. Sometimes 
it glows in purple, pink, and crimson, intense, but 
unconsuming, hke Horeb's burning bush. The 
old Greeks knew it well, and they baptized its 
prismatic loveliness with their sunny symbolism, 
and called it the Flame-Flower. These very 
seeds may have sprung centuries ago from the 
hearts of heroes who sleep at Marathon ; and 
when their tender petals quiver in the sunlight of 
my garden, I shall see the gleam of Attic armor 
and the flash of royal souls. Like heroes, too, 
it is both beautiful and bold. It does not demand 
careful cultivation, — no hot-house tenderness — " 

" I should rathe^ think not," interrupted Hali- 
carnassus. " Pat Curran has his front-yard full 
of it." 

I collapsed at once, and asked, humbly, — 

" Where did he get it ? " 

" Got it anywhere. It grows wild almost. It 's 
nothing but phlox. My opinion is, that the old 
Greeks knew no more about it than that brindled 
cow." 

Nothino; further occurrino; to me to be said on 
the subject, I waived it, and took up another par- 
cel, on M'hich I spelled out, with some difficulty, 
" Delphinium exaltatuyn. Its name indicates its 
nature." 



MY GARDEN. 47 

" It 's an exalted dolphin, then, I suppose," said 
Halicarnassus. 

" Yes ! " I said, dexterously catching up an 
argiimentum ad hominem, "it is an exalted dolphin, 
— an apotheosized dolphin, — a dolphin made glo- 
rious. For, as the dolphin catches the sunbeams 
and sends them back with a thousand added splen- 
dors, so this flower opens its quivering bosom and 
gathers from the vast laboratory of the sky the 
purple of a monarch's robe, and the ocean's deep, 
calm blue. In its gracious cup you shall see — " 

" A fiddlestick ! " jerked out Halicarnassus, 
profanely. " What are you raving about such 
a precious bundle of weeds for ? There is n't 
a shoemaker's apprentice in the village that has 
n't his seven-by-nine garden overrun with them. 
You mio;ht have done better than bring cart-loads 
of phlox and larkspur a thousand miles. Why 
did n't you import a few hollyhocks, or a sun- 
flower or two, and perhaps a dainty slip of cab- 
bage? A pumpkin-vine, now, would climb over 
the front-door deliciously, and a row of burdocks 
would make a highly entertaining border." 

The reader will bear me witness that I had met 
my first rebuff with humility. It was probably 
this very humility that emboldened him to a 
second attack. I determined to change my tac- 
tics, and give battle. 

" Halicarnassus," said I, severely, " you are a 
hypocrite. You set up for a Democrat — " 



48 COUNTRY LIVING. 

" Not I," interrupted he ; "I voted for Harrison 
in '40, and for Fremont in ^bQ., and — " 

" Nonsense ! " interrupted I, in turn ; " I mean 
a Democrat etymological, not a Democrat political. 
You stand by the Declaration of Independence, 
and believe in liberty, equality, and fraternity, and 
that all men are of one blood ; and here you are, 
ridiculing these innocent flowers, because their 
brilliant beauty is not shut up in a conservatory, 
to exhale its fragrance on a fastidious few, but 
blooms on all alike, gladdening the home of exile 
and lightening the burden of labor." 

Halicarnassus saw that I had made a point 
against him, and preserved a discreet silence. 

" But you are wrong," I went on, " even if you 
are right. You may laugh to scorn my floral 
treasures, because they seem to you common and 
unclean, but your laughter is premature. It is no 
ordinary seed that you see before you. It sprang 
from no profane soil. It came from the — the — 
some kind of an office at Washington, sir ! It 
was given me by one whose name stands high on 
the scroll of fame, — a statesman whose views are 
as broad as his judgment is sound, — an orator 
who holds all hearts in his hand, — a man who is 
always found on the side of the feeble truth against 
the strong falsehood, — whose sympathy for all 
that is good, whose hostility to all that is bad, and 
whose boldness in every righteous cause, make 
him alike the terror and abhorrence of the op- 



MY GARDEN. 49 

pressor, and the hope and joy and staff of the 
oppressed." 

" What is his name ? " said HaHcarnassus, 
phlegmatically. 

" And for your miserable pumpkin-vine," I went 
on, " behold this morning-glory, that shall open its 
barbaric splendor to the sun and mount heaven- 
ward on the sparkling chariots of the dew. I 
took this from the white hand of a young girl in 
whose heart poetry and purity have met, grace 
and virtue have kissed each other, — whose feet 
have danced over lilies and roses, who has " known 
no sterner duty than to give caresses," and whose 
gentle, spontaneous, and ever-active loveliness con- 
tinually remind me that of such is the kingdom of 
heaven." 

"Courted yet?" asked HaHcarnassus, with a 
show of interest. 

I transfixed him with a look, and continued, — 

" This Maurandia, a climber, it may be com- 
mon or it may be a king's ransom. I only know 
that it is rosy-hued, and that I shall look at life 
through its pleasant medivim. Some fantastic 
trellis, brown and benevolent, shall knot support- 
ing arms around it, and day by day it shall twine 
daintily up toward my southern window, and whis- 
per softly of the sweet-voiced, tender-eyed woman 
from whose fairy bower it came in rosy wrappings. 
And this Nemophila^ ' blue as my brother's eyes,' 
— the brave young brother whose heroism and 

3 D 



50 COUNTRY LIVING. 

manhood have outstripped his years, and who 
looks forth from the dark leafiness of far Austraha 
lovingly and longingly over the blue waters, as 
if, floating above them, he might catch the flutter 
of white garments and the smile on a sister's 
lip — " 

" What are you going to do with 'em ? " put in 
Halicarnassus again. 

I hesitated a moment, undecided whether to be 
amiable or bellicose under the provocation, but 
concluded that my ends would stand a better 
chance of being gained by adopting the former 
course, and so answered seriously, as if I had not 
been switched off the track, but was going on 
with perfect continuity, — 

" To-morrow I shall take observations. Then, 
where the situation seems most favorable, I shall 
lay out a garden. I shall plant these seeds in it, 
except the vines and such things, which I wish to 
put near the house to hide as much as possible its 
garish white. Then, with everv little tender shoot 
that appears above the ground, there will blossom 
also a pleasant memory, or a sunny hope, or an 
admiring thrill." 

" What do you expect will be the market-value 
of that crop ? " 

" Wealth which an empire could not purchase," 
I answered, with enthusiasm. " But I shall not 
confine my attention to flowers. I shall make the 
useful go with the beautiful. I shall plant vege- 



MY GARDEN. 51 

tables, — lettuce, and asparagus, and — so forth. 
Our table shall be garnished with the products of 
our own soil, and our own works shall praise us." 

There Avas a pause of several minutes, during 
which I fondled the seeds, and Halicarnassus en- 
veloped himself in clouds of smoke. Presently 
there was a cessation of puffs, a rift in the cloud 
showed that the oracle was opening his mouth, 
and directly thereafter he delivered himself of the 
encouraging remark, — 

" If we don't have any vegetables till we raise 
'em, we shall be carnivorous for some time to 
come." 

It was said with that provoking indifference 
more trying to a sensitive mind than downright 
insult. You know it is based on some hidden 
obstacle, palpable to your enemy, though hidden 
from you, — and that he is calm because he knows 
that the nature of things will work against you, 
so that he need not interfere. If I had been less 
interested, I would have revenged myself on him 
by remaining silent ; but I was very much inter- 
ested, so I strangled my pride and said, — 

"Why not?" 

" Land is too old for such things. Soil is n't 
mellow enough." 

I had always supposed that the greater part of 
the main-land of our continent was of equal an- 
tiquity, and dated back alike to the alluvial period ; 
but I suppose our little three acres must have been 



52 COUNTRY LIVING. 

injected tlirougli the intervening strata by some 
physical convulsion, from the drift, or the tertiary 
formation, perhaps even from the primitive granite. 

" What are you going to do ? " I ventured to 
inquire. " I don't suppose the land will grow any 
younger by keeping." 

" Plant it with corn and potatoes for at least 
two years before there can be anything like a gar- 
den." 

And Halicarnassus put up his pipe and betook 
himself to the house, — and I was glad of it, the 
abominable bore ! — to sit there and listen to my 
glowing schemes, knowing all the while that they 
were soap-bubbles. " Corn and potatoes," indeed ! 
I did n't believe a word of it. Halicarnassus al- 
ways had an insane passion for corn and potatoes. 
Land represented to him so many bushels of the 
one or the other. Now coi'n and potatoes are very 
well in their way, but, like every other innocent 
indulgence, carried too far, become a vice ; and I 
more than suspected he had planned the strategy 
simply to gratify his own weakness. Corn and 
potatoes, indeed ! 

But wdien Halicarnassus entered the lists against 
me, he found an opponent worthy of his steel. 
A few more such victories would be his ruin. A 
grand scheme fired and filled my mind during the 
silent watches of the night, and sent me forth in 
the morning, jubilant with high resolve. Alexan- 
der might weep that he had no more worlds to 



MY GARDEN. 53 

conquer ; but I would create new. Archimedes 
miglit desiderate a place to stand on, before he 
could bring his lever into play ; I would move the 
world, self'poise L If Halicarnassus fancied that 
I was cut up, dispersed, and annihilated by one 
disaster, he should weep tears of blood to see me 
rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of my dead 
hopes, to a newer and more glorious life. Here, 
having exhausted my classics, I took a long sweep 
down to modern times, and vowed in my heart 
never to give u.p the ship. 

Halicarnassus saw that a fell purpose was work- 
ing in my mind, but a certain high tragedy in my 
aspect warned him to silence ; so he only dogged 
me around the corners of the house, eyed me 
askance from the wood-shed, and peeped through 
the crevices of the demented little barn. But his 
vigilance bore no fruit. I but walked moodily 
" with folded arms and fixed eyes," or struck out 
new paths at random, so long as there were any 
vestiges of his creation extant. His time and 
patience being at length exhausted, he went into 
the field to immolate himself with ever new devo- 
tion on the shrine of corn and potatoes. Then 
my scheme came to a head at once. In my walk- 
ing, I had observed a box about three feet long, 
two broad, and one foot deep, which Halicar- 
nassus, with his usual disregard of the proprieties 
of life, had used to block up a gateway that was 
waiting for a gate. It was just what I wanted. 



54 COUNTRY LIVING. 

I straightway knocked out the few nails that kept 
it in place, and, like another Samson, bore it away 
on my shoulders. It was not an easy thing to 
manage, as any one may find by trying, — nor 
would I advise young ladies, as a general thing, to 
adopt that fonn of exercise, — but the end, not 
the means, was my object, and by skilful diplo- 
macy I got it up the back-stairs and through 
my window, out upon the roof of the porch di- 
^ rectly below. I then took the ash-pail and the 
fire-shovel, and went into the field, carefully keep- 
ing the lee-side of Halicarnassus. " Good, rich 
loam" I had observed all the gardening books to 
recommend ; but wherein the virtue or the rich- 
ness of loam consisted I did not feel competent 
to decide, and I scorned to ask. There seemed 
to be two kinds : one black, damp, and dismal ; 
the other fine, yellow, and good-natured. A little 
reflection decided me to take the latter. Gold 
constituted riches, and this was yellov/ like gold. 
Moreover, it seemed to have more life in it. 
Night and darkness belonged to the other, while 
the very heart of sunshine and summer seemed to 
be imprisoned in this golden dust. So I plied my 
shovel and filled my pail again and again, bearing 
it aloft with joyful labor, eager to be through 
before Halicarnassus should reappear ; but he got 
on the trail just as I was whisking up-stairs for the 
last time, and shouted, astonished, — 
" What are you doing ? " 



MY GARDEN. 55 

" Nothing," I answered, with that well-known 
accent which says, " Everything ! and I mean 
to keep doing it." 

I have observed, that, in managing parents, 
husbands, lovers, brothers, and indeed all classes 
of inferiors, nothing is so efficacious as to let them 
know at the outset that you are going to have your 
own way. They may fret a little at first, and in- 
terpose a few puny obstacles, but it will be only a 
temporary obstruction ; whereas, if you parley and 
hesitate and suggest, they will but gather courage 
and strength for a formidable resistance. It is the 
first step that costs. Halicarnassus understood at 
once from my one small shot that I v.:as in a mood 
to be let alone, and he let me alone accordingly. 

I remembered he had said that the soil was not 
mellow enough, and I determined that my soil 
should be mellow, to which end I took it up by 
handfuls and squeezed it through my fingers, com- 
pletely pulverizing it. It was not disagreeable 
work. Things in their right places are very sel- 
dom disagreeeble. A spider on your dress is a 
horror, but a spider out-doors is rather interesting. 
Besides, the loam had a fine, soft feel that was 
absolutely pleasant ; but a hideous black and yel- 
low reptile with horns and hoofs, that winked up 
at me from it, was decidedly unpleasant and out 
of place, and I at once concluded that the soil 
■was sufficiently mellow for my purposes, and 
smoothed it off directly. Then, with delighted 



56 COUNTRY LIVING. 

fingers, in sweeping circles, and fantastic whirls, 
and exact triangles, I planted my seeds in gener- 
ous profusion, determined, that, if my wilderness 
did not blossom, it should not be from niggardli- 
ness of seed. But even then my box was frill 
before my basket was emptied, and I was very 
reluctantly compelled to bring down from the 
garret another box, which had been the property 
of my great-grandfather. My great-grandfather 
was, I regret to say, a barber. I would rather 
never have had any. If there is anything in the 
world besides worth that I reverence, it is an- 
cestry. My whole life long have I been in seai'ch 
of a pedigree, and though I run well at the be- 
ginning, I invariably stop short at the third re- 
move by running my head into a barber's shop. 
If he had only been a farmer, now, I should not 
have minded. There is something dignified and 
antique in land, and no one need trouble himself 
to ascertain whether " farmer " stood for a close- 
fisted, narrow-souled clodhopper, or the smiling, 
benevolent master of broad acres. Farmer means 
both these, I could have chosen the meaning I 
liked, and it is not probable that any troublesome 
facts would have floated down the years to inter- 
cept any theory I might have launched. I would 
rather he had been a shoemaker ; it would have 
been so easy to transform him, after his lamented 
decease, into a shoe-manufacturer, — and shoe- 
manufacturers, we all know, are highly respectable 



MY GARDEN. 57 

people, often become great men, and get sent to 
Congress. An apothecary might have fio-ured 
as an M. D. A green-grocer might have been 
subhmated into a merchant. A dancing-master 
■would flourish on the family records as a professor 
of the Terpsichorean art. A taker of daguerro- 
type portraits would never be recognized in " my 
great-grandfather tJie artist.'' But a barber is un- 
mitigated and immitigable. It cannot be shaded 
off, nor toned down, nor brushed up. Besides, yv^s 
greatness ever allied to barberity ? Shakespeare's 
father was a wool-driver, Tillotson's a clothier, 
Barrow's a linen-draper, Defoe's a butcher, Mil- 
ton's a scrivener, Richardson's a joiner, Burns's 
a farmer ; but did any one ever hear of a barber's 
having remarkable children ? I must say, with 
all deference to my great-grandfather, that I do 
wish he would have been considerate enouo;h of 
his descendants' feehnoi;s to have been born in the 
old days when barbers and doctors were one, or 
else have chosen some other occupation than bar- 
bering. Barber he did, however ; in this very box 
he kept his wigs, and, painful as it was to have 
continually before my eyes this perpetual reminder 
of plebeian great-grand-paternity, I consented to 
it rather than lose my seeds. Then I folded my 
hands in sweet, though calm satisfaction. I had 
proved myself equal to the emergency, and that 
always diffuses a glow of genial complacency 
through the soul. I had outwitted Halicarnassus. 
3* 



58 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Exultation number two. He had designed to 
cheat me out of my garden by a story about land, 
and here was my garden ready to burst fortli into 
blossom under my eyes. He said little, but I 
knew he felt deeply. I caught him one day look- 
ing out at my window with corroding envy in 
every lineament. " You might have got some 
dust out of the road ; it would have been nearer." 
That was all he said. Even that little I did not 
fully understand. 

I watched, and waited, and watered, in silent 
expectancy, for several days, but nothing came up, 
and I began to be anxious. Suddenly I thought 
of my vegetable-seeds, and determined to try 
those. Of course a hanging kitchen-garden was 
not to be thought of, and as Halicarnassus was 
fortunately absent for a few days, I prospected on 
the farm. A sunny little corner on a southern 
slope smiled up at me, and seemed to offer itself 
as a deliohtful situation for the diminutive garden 
which mine must be. The soil, too, seemed as 
fine and mellow as could be desired. I at once 
captured an Englishman from a neighboring plan- 
tation, hurried him into my corner, and bade him 
dig me and hoe me and plant me a garden as soon 
as possible. He looked blankly at me for a mo- 
ment, and I looked blankly at him, wondering 
what lion he saw in the way. 

" Them is planted with potatoes now," he 
gasped, at length. 



3IY GARDEN. 59 

" jSTo matter," I returned, with sudden relief to 
find that nothing but potatoes interfered. " I 
want it to be unplanted, and planted with vegeta- 
bles, — lettuce and — asparagus — and such." 

He stood hesitating. 

" Will the master like it ? " 

" Yes," said Diplomacy, " he will be delighted." 

" No matter whether he likes it or not," codi- 
ciled Conscience. " You do it." 

"I — don't exactly like — to — take the respon- 
sibility," wavered this modern Faint-Heart. 

" I don't want you to take the responsibility," I 
ejaculated, with volcanic vehemence. " I '11 take 
the responsibility. You take the hoe ! " 

These duty-people do infuriate me. They are 
so afraid to do anything that is n't laid out in a 
right-angled triangle. Every path must be graded 
and turfed before they dare set their scrupulous 
feet in it. I like conscience, but, like corn and 
potatoes, carried too far, it becomes a vice. I 
think I could commit a murder with less hesitation 
than some people buy a ninepenny calico. And to 
see that man stand here, balancing probabilities 
over a piece of ground no bigger than a bed-quilt, 
as if a nation's fate were at stake, was enough to 
ruffle a calmer temper than mine. My impetuosity 
impressed him, however, and he began to lay about 
him vigorously with hoe and rake and lines, and, 
in an incredibly short space of time, had a bit of 
square flatness laid out with wonderful precision. 



60 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Meanwhile I liacl ransacked my vegetable-bag, 
and, though lettuce and asparagus were not there, 
plenty of beets and parsnips and squashes, etc. 
were. I let him take his choice. He took the 
first two. The rest were left on my hands. But 
I had gone too far to recede. They burned in my 
pocket for a few days, and I saw that I must get 
them into the ground somewhere. I could not 
sleep with them in the room. They were wander- 
ing shades, craving at my hands a burial, and I 
determined to put them where Banquo's ghost 
would not go, — down. Down accordingly they 
went, but not symmetrically nor simultaneously. 
I faced Halicarnassus on the subject of the beet- 
bed, and though I cannot say that either of us 
gained a brilliant victory, yet I can say that I 
kept possession of the ground ; still, I did not care 
to risk a second encounter. So I kept my seeds 
about me continually, and dropped them surrep- 
titiously as occasion offered. Conseqviently, my 
garden, taken as a whole, was located where the 
Penobscot Indian was born, — "all along shore." 
The squashes were scattered among the corn. 
The beans were tucked under the brushwood, 
in the fond hope that they would climb up it. 
Two tomato-plants were lodged in the potato-field, 
under the protection of some broken apple-branches 
dragged thither for the purpose. The cucumbers 
went down on the sheltered side of a wood-pile. 
The peas took their chances of life under the sink- 



MY GARDEN. 61 

nose. The sweet-corn was marked off from the 
rest by a broomstick, — and all took root alike 
in my heart. 

May I ask jo\i now, O friend, who, I would 
fain believe, have followed me thus far with no 
hostile eyes, to glide in tranced forgetfulness 
through the white blooms of May and the roses 
of June, into the warm breath of July afternoons 
and the languid pulse of August, perhaps even 
into the mild haze of September and the " flying 
gold " of brown October ? In narrating to you 
the fruition of my hopes, I shall endeavor to pre- 
serve that calm equanimity which is the birthright 
of royal, minds. I shall endeavor not to be un- 
duly elated by success nor unduly depressed by 
failure, but to state in simple language the result 
of my experiments, both for an encouragement and 
a warning. I shall give the history of the several 
ventures separately, as nearly as I can recollect 
in the order in which they grew, beginning with 
the humbler ministers to our appetites, and soar- 
ing gradually into the region of the poetical and 
the beautiful. 

Beets. — The beets came up, little red- veined 
leaves, struggling for breath among a tangle of 
Roman wormwood and garlic ; and though they 
exibited great tenacity of life, they also exibited 
great irregularity of purpose. In one spot there 
would be nothing, in an adjacent sj^ot a whorl of 



62 COUNTRY LIVING. 

beets, big and little, crowding and jostling and 
elbowing each other, like school-boys round the 
red-hot stove on a winter's morning. I knew they 
had been planted in a right line, and I don't even 
now comprehend why they should not come up in 
a right line. I weeded them, and though freedom 
from foreign growth discovered an intention of 
straightness, the most casual observer could not 
but see that skewiness had usurped its place. I 
repaired to my friend the gardener. He said they 
must be thinned out and transplanted. It Avent to 
my heart to pull up the dear things, but I did it, 
and set them down again tenderly in the vacant 
spots. It was evening. The next morning I went 
to them. Flatness has a new meaning to me since 
that morning. You can hardly conceive that any- 
thing could look so utterly forlorn, disconsolate, 
disheartened, and collapsed. In fact, they exhib- 
ited a degree of depression so entirely beyond what 
the circumstances demanded, that I was enraged. 
If they had shown any symptoms of trying to live, 
I could have sighed and forgiven them ; but, on 
the contrary, they had flopped and died without a 
struggle, and I pulled them up without a pang, 
comforting myself with the remaining ones, which 
throve on their companions' graves, and waxed fat 
and full and crimson-hearted, in their soft, brown 
beds. So delighted was I with their luxuriant 
rotundity, that I made an internal resolve that 
henceforth I would always plant beets. True, I 



MY GARDEN. 63 

cannot abide beets. Their fi'agranee and their fla- 
vor are ahke nauseating ; but they come up, and a 
beet that will come up is better than a cedar of 
Lebanon that won't. In all the vegetable kingdom 
I know of no quality better than this, growth, — 
nor any quality that will atone for its absence. 

Parsnips. — They ran the race with an inde- 
scribable vehemence that fairly threw the beets 
into the shade. They trod so delicately at first 
that I was quite unprepared for such enthusiasm. 
Lacking the red veining, I could not distinguish 
them from the weeds with any certainty, and 
was forced to let both grow together till the har- 
vest. So both grew together, a perfect jungle. 
But the parsnips got ahead, and rushed up glo- 
riously, magnificently, bacchanalianly, — as the 
winds come when forests are rended, — as the 
waves come when navies are stranded. I am, 
indeed, troubled with a suspicion that their vital- 
ity has all run to leaves, and that, when I go 
down into the depths of the earth for the parsnips, 
I shall find only bread of emptiness. It is a pleas- 
ing reflection that parsnips cannot be eaten till 
the second year. I am told that they must lie 
in the ground during the winter. Consequently 
it cannot be decided whether there are any or 
not till next spring. I shall in the mean time 
assume and assert, without hesitation or qualifica- 
tion, that there are as many tubers below the 



64 COUNTRY LIVING. 

surface as there are leaves above it. I shall 
thereby enjoy a pleasant consciousness, and the 
respect of all, for the winter ; and if disappoint- 
ment awaits nie in the spring, time will have 
blunted its keenness for me, and other people 
will have forgotten the whole subject. You may 
be sure I shall not remind them of it. 

Cucumbers. — The cucumbers came up so far, 
and stuck. It must have been innate depravity, 
for there was no shadow of reason why they 
should not keep on as they began. They did 
not. They stopped growing in the prime of life. 
Only three cucumbers developed, and they hid 
under the vines so that I did not see them till 
they were become ripe, yellow, soft, and worth- 
less. They are an unwholesome fruit at best, 
and I bore their loss with great fortitude. 

Tomatoes. — Both dead. I had been instructed 
to protect them from the frost by night and from 
the sun by day. I intended to do so ultimately, 
but I did not suppose there was any emergency. 
A fi'ost came the first night and killed them, 
and a hot sun the next day burned up all there 
was left. When they were both thoroughly 
dead, I took great pains to cover them every 
night and noon. No symptoms of revival ap- 
pearing to reward my efforts, I left them to 
shift for themselves. I did not think there was 



MY GARDEN. 65 

any need of their dying in the first place ; and 
if they would be so absurd as to die without 
provocation, I did not see the necessity of going 
into a decline about it. Besides, I never did 
value plants or animals that have to be nursed, 
and petted, and coaxed to live. If things want 
to die, I think they 'd better die. Pi'ovoked 
by my indiiference, one of the tomatoes flared 
up, and took a new start, — put foi'th leaves, shot 
out vines, and covered himself with fruit and 
glory. The chickens picked out the heart of all 
the tomatoes as soon as they ripened, which was 
of no consequence, however, as they had wasted 
so much time in the beginning that the autumn 
frosts came upon them unawares, and there 
w^ould n't have been fruit enough ripe to be of 
any account, if no chicken had ever broken a 
shell. 

Squashes. — They appeared above-ground, 
large-lobed and vioorous. Large and vigorous 
appeared the bugs, all gleaming in green and 
gold, like the wolf on the fold, and stopped up 
all the stomata and ate up all the parenchyma, 
till my squash-leaves looked as if they had grown 
for the sole purpose of illustrating net-veined or- 
ganizations. In consternation I sought again my 
neighbor the Englishman. He assured me he 
had 'em on his, too, — lots of 'em. This rec- 
onciled me to mine. Bugs are not inherently 



66 COUNTRY LIVING. 

desirable, but a universal bug does not indicate 
special want of skill in any one. So I was com- 
forted. But the Englishman said they must be 
killed. He had killed his. Then I said I would 
kill mine, too. How should it be done ? O, 
put a shingle near the vine at night, and they 
would crawl upon it to keep dry, and go out 
early in the morning and kill 'em. But how to 
kill them ? Why, take 'em right between your 
thumb and finger and crush 'em ! 

As soon as I could recover breath, I informed 
him confidentially, that, if the world were one 
great squash, I would n't undertake to save it in 
that way. He smiled a little, but I think he was 
not overmuch pleased. I asked him why I could 
n't take a bucket of water and dip the shingle in 
it and drown them. He said, well, I could try it. 
I did try it, — first wrapping my hand in a cloth 
to prevent contact with any stray bug. To my 
amazement, the moment they touched the water 
they all spread unseen wings and flew away, safe 
and sound. I should not have been much more 
surprised to see Halicarnassus soaring over the 
ridge-pole. I had not the slightest idea that they 
could fly. Of course I gave up the design of 
drowning them. I called a council of war. One 
said I must put a newspaper over them and fasten 
it down at the edges ; then they could n't get in. 
I timidly suggested that the squashes could n't get 
out. Yes, they could, he said, — they 'd grow right 



MY GARDEN. 67 

through the paper. Another said I must surround 
them with round boxes with the bottoms broken 
out; for, though they could fly, they could n't steer, 
and when they flew up they just dropped down 
anywhere, and as there was on the whole a good 
deal more land on the outside of the boxes than on 
the inside, the chances were in favor of their drop- 
ping on the outside. Another said that ashes must 
be sprinkled on them. A fourth said lime was an 
infallible remedy. I began with the paper, which 
I secured with no little difticulty ; for the wind — 
the same Avind, strange to say — kept blowing the 
dirt at me and the paper away from me ; but I 
consoled myself by remembering the numberless 
rows of squash-pies that should crown my labors, 
and May took heart from Thanksgiving. The 
next day I peeped under the paper, and the bugs 
were a solid phalanx. I reported at head-quar- 
ters, and they asked me if I killed the bugs before 
I put the paper down. I said no, I supposed it 
would stifle them, — in fact, I did not think any- 
thing about it, but if I had thought anything, 
that was what I thought. I was not pleased to 
find I had been cultivatino; the bug-s and furnish- 
ing them with free lodofings. I went home, and 
tried all the remedies in succession. I could 
hardly decide which agreed best with the structure 
and habits of the bugs, but they throve on all. 
Then I tried them all at once and all o'er with a 
mighty uproar. Presently the bugs went away. 



68 COUNTRY LIVING. 

I am not sure that they would not have gone just 
as soon, if I had let them alone. After they were 
gone, the vmes scrambled out and put forth some 
beautiful, deep-golden blossoms. When they fell 
off, that was the end of them. Not a squash, — 
not one, — not a single squash, — not even a 
pumpkin. They were all false blossoms. 

Apples. — The trees swelled into masses of 
pink and white fragrance. Nothing could ex- 
ceed their fluttering loveliness or their luxuriant 
promise. A few days of fairy beauty, and showers 
of soft petals floated noiselessly down, covering the 
earth with delicate snow ; but I knew, that, though 
the first blush of beauty was gone, a mighty work 
was going on in a million little laboratories, and 
that the real glory was yet to come. I was sur- 
prised to observe, one day, that the trees seemed 
to be turning red. I remarked to Halicarnassus 
that that was one of Nature's processes which I 
did not I'emember to have seen noticed in any 
botanical treatise. I thought such a change did 
not occur till autumn. Halicarnassus curved the 
thumb and forefinger of his rio-lit hand into an 
arch, the ends of which rested on the wrist of 
his left coat-sleeve. He then lifted the forefinger 
high and brought it forward. Then he lifted the 
thumb and brought it up behind the forefinger, 
and so made them travel up to his elbow. It 
seemed to require considerable exertion in the 



MY GARDEN. 69 

thumb and forefinger, and I watched the progress 
Avith interest. Then I asked him what he meant 
by It. 

" That 's the way they walk," he replied. 

" Who walk ? " 

'' The little fellows that have squatted on our 
Irees." 

" "What little fellows do you mean ? " 

" The canker-worms ? " 

" How many are there ? " 

" About twenty-five decillions, I should think, 
as near as I can count." 

" Why ! what are they for ? What good do 
they do ? " 

" O, no end. Keep the children from eating 
green apples and getting sick." 

" How do they do that ? " 

" Eat 'em themselves." 

A frightful idea dawned upon me. I believe I 
turned a kind of ghastly blue. 

" Haliearnassus, do you mean to tell me that 
the canker-woi-ms are eating up our apples, and 
that we shan't have any ? " 

" It looks like that exceedingly." 

That was months ago, and it looks a great deal 
more like it now. I watched those trees with 
sadness at my heart. Millions of brown, ugly, 
villanous worms gnawed, gnawed, gnawed, at the 
poor little tender leaves and buds, — held them 
in foul embrace, — polluted their sweetness with 



70 COUNTRY LIVING. 

hateful breath. I could almost feel the shudder 
of the trees in that sHmy clasp, — could almost 
hear the shrieking and moaning of the young fruit 
that saw its hope of happy life thus slowly con- 
suming ; but I was powerless to save. For weeks 
that loathsome army preyed upon the unhappy, 
helpless trees, and then spun loathsomely to the 
ground, and buried itself in the reluctant, shud- 
dering soil. A few dismal little apples escaped 
the common fate ; but when they rounded into 
greenness and a suspicion of pulp, a boring worm 
came and bored them, and they too died. No 
apple-pies at Thanksgiving. No apple-roasting in 
winter evenings. No pan-pie with hot brown 
bread on Sunday mornings. 

Cherries. — They rivalled the apple-blooms in 
snowy profusion, and the branches were covered 
with tiny balls. The sun mounted warm and high 
in the heavens, and they blushed under his ardent 
gaze. I felt an increasing conviction that here 
there wovdd be no disappointment ; but it soon 
became palpable that another class of depredators 
had marked our trees for their own. Little brown 
toes could occasionally be seen peeping from the 
foliage, and little bare feet left their print on the 
garden-soil. Humanity had evidently deposited 
its larva in the vicinity. There was a school- 
house not very far away, and the children used 
to draw water from an old well in a distant part 



MY GARDEN. 71 

of the garden. It was surprising to see how 
thirsty they all became as the cherries ripened. 
It was as if the village had simultaneously agreed 
to breakfast on salt fish. Their wooden bucket 
might have been the urn of the Danai'des, judging 
from the time it took to fill it. The boys were as 
fleet of foot as young zebras, and presented upon 
discovery no apology or justification but their 
heels, — which was a wise stroke in them. A 
troop of rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed little snips in 
white pantalets, caught in the act, reasoned with 
in a semicircle, and cajoled with candy, were as 
sweet as distilled honey, and promised with all , 
their innocent hearts and hands not to do so any 
more. 

Then the cherries were allowed to hane; on the 
trees and ripen. It took them a great while. If 
they had been as big as hogsheads, I should think 
the sun might have got through them sooner than 
he did. They looked ripe long before they were 
so ; and, as they were very plenty, the trees pre- 
sented a beautiful appearance. I bought a stack of 
fantastic little baskets from a travelling Indian tribe, 
at a fabulous price, for the sake of fulfilling my 
long-cherished design of sending fruit to my city 
friends. After long waiting, Halicarnassus came 
in one morning with a tin pail full, and said that 
they were ripe at last, for they were turning purple 
and falling off; and he was going to have them 
gathered at once. He had brought in the first- 



72 COUNTRY LIVING. 

fruits for breakfast. I put them in the best pre- 
serve-dish, twined it with myrtle, and set it in 
the centre of the table. It looked charming, — 
so ruddy and rural and Arcadian. I wished we 
could breakfast out-doors ; but the summer was 
one of unusual severity, and it was hardly prudent 
thus to brave its rigor. We had cup-custards at 
the close of our breakfast that morning, — very 
vulgar, but very delicious. We reached the 
cherries at the same moment, and swallowed the 
first one simultaneously. The effect was instan- 
taneous and electric. Halicarnassus puckered his 
face into a perfect wheel, with his mouth for the 
hub. I don't know how I looked, but I felt badly 
enough. 

" It was unfortunate that we had custards this 
morning," I remarked. " They are so sweet that 
the cherries seem sour by contrast. AVe shall 
soon get the sweet taste out of our mouths, how- 
ever." 

" That 's so ! " said Halicarnassus, who will be 
coarse. 

We tried another. He exhibited a similar pan- 
tomime, with improvements. My feelings were 
also the same, intensified. 

" I am not in luck to-day," I said, attempting 
to smile. " I got hold of a sour cherry this 
time." 

" I got hold of a bitter one," said Halicarnassus. 

" Mine was a little bitter, too," I added. 



MY GARDEN. 73 

" Mine was a little sour, too," said Halicar- 
nassus. 

" We shall have to try again," said I. 

AVe did try again. 

" Mine Avas a good deal of both this time," said 
Halicarnassus. " But we will give them a fair 
trial." 

" Yes," said I, sepidchrally. 

We sat there sacrificing ourselves to abstract 
right for five minutes. Then I leaned back in 
my chair, and looked at Halicarnassus. He 
rested his right elbow on the table, and looked 
at me. 

" Well," said he at last, "how are cherries 
and things ? " 

" Halicarnassus," said I, solemnly, " it is my 
firm conviction that farming is not a lucrative 
occupation. You have no certain assurance of 
return, either for labor or capital invested. Look 
at it. The bugs eat up the squashes. The 
Avorms eat up the apples. The cucumbers won't 
grow at all. The peas have got lost. The cher- 
ries are bitter as wormwood and sour as you in 
your worst moods. Everything that is good for 
anything won't grow, and everything that grows 
isn't good for anything." 

" My Indian corn, though," began Halicarnas- 
sus ; but I snapped him up before he was fairly 
under Avay. I had no idea of travelling in that 
direction. 

4 



74 COUNTRY LIVING. 

" What am I to do with all those baskets that 
I bought, I should like to know ? " I asked, 
sharply. 

" What did you buy them for ? " he asked in 
return. 

" To send cherries to the Hudsons and the 
Mavericks and Fred Ashley," I replied promptly. 

" Why don't you send 'em, then ? There 's 
plenty of them, — more than we shall want." 

" Because," I answered, " I have not exhausted 
the pleasures of friendship. Nor do I perceive 
the benefit that would accrue from turning life- 
long friends into life-long enemies." 

"I '11 tell you what we can do," said Halicar- 
nassus. " We can give a party and treat them to 
cherries. They '11- have to eat 'em out of polite- 
ness." 

" Halicarnassus," said I, " we should be mobbed. 
We should fall victims to the fury of a disap- 
pointed and enraged populace." 

" At any rate," said he, " we can offer them to 
chance visitors." 

The suggestion seemed to me a good one, — at 
any rate, the only one that held out any prospect 
of relief. Thereafter, whenever friends called sin- 
gly or in squads, — if the squads were not large 
enough to be formidable, — we invariably set cher- 
ries before them, and with generous hospitality 
pressed them to partake. The varying phases of 
emotion which they exhibited were painful to me 



MY GARDEN. 75 

at first, but I at length came to taKe a morbid 
pleasure in noting them. It was a study for a 
sculptor. By long practice I learned to detect 
the shadow of each coming change, where a cas- 
ual observer would see only a serene expanse of 
placid politeness. I knew just where the radi- 
ance, awakened by the luscious, swelling, crim- 
son globes, faded into doubt, settled into certainty, 
glared into perplexity, fired into rage. I saw 
the grimace, suppressed as soon as begun, but 
not less patent to my preternaturally keen eyes. 
No one deceived me by being suddenly seized 
with admiration of a view. I knew it was only 
to relieve his nerves by making faces behind the 
window-curtains. 

I grew to take a fiendish delight in watching 
the conflict, and the fierce desperation which 
marked its violence. On the one side were the 
forces of fusion, a relvictant stomach, an unwill- 
ing oesophagus, a loathing palate ; on the other, 
the stern, unconquerable will. A natural philos- 
opher would have gathered new proofs of the un- 
limited capacity of the human race to adapt itself 
to circumstances, from the debris that strewed 
our premises after each fresh departure. Cher- 
ries were chucked under the sofa, into the table- 
drawers, behind the books, under the lamp-mats, 
into the vases, in any and every place where a 
dexterous hand could dispose of them without 
detection. Yet their number seemed to suffer 



76 COUNTRY LIVING. 

no abateirient. Like Tityus's liver, they were 
constantly renewed, though constantly consumed. 
The small boys seemed to be suffering from a fit 
of conscience. In vain we closed the blinds and 
shut ourselves up in the house to give them a fair 
field. Not a cherry was taken. In vain we went 
ostentatiously to church all day on Sunday. Not 
a twig was touched. Finally I dropped all the 
curtains on that side of the house, and avoided 
that part of the garden in my walks. The cher- 
ries may be hanging there to this day, for aught 
I know. 

But why do I thus linger over the sad recital ? 
" Ah uno disce omnes.'''' (A quotation from Vir- 
gil : means, " All of a piece.") There may have 
been, there probably was, an abundance of sweet- 
corn, but the broomstick that had marked the spot 
was lost, and I could in no wise recall either spot 
or stick. Nor did I ever see or hear of the peas, 
— or the beans. If our chickens could be brought 
to the witness-box, they might throw light on the 
subject. As it is, I drop a natural tear, and pass 
on to 

The Flower- Garden. — It appeared very 
much behind time, — chiefly Roman wormwood. 
I was grateful even for that. Then two rows 
of fonr-o'-clocks became visible to the naked eye. 
They are cryptogamous, it seems. Botanists have 
hitherto classed them amono; the Phsenosamia. 



3IY GARDEN. 77 

A sweet-pea and a china-aster dawdled up just 
in time to get frost-bitten. " SJt prceterea nihiU^ 
(Virgil: means, "That's all.") I am sure it 
was no fault of mine. I tended my seeds with 
assiduous care. My devotion was unwearied. 
I was a very slave to their caprices. I planted 
them just beneath the surface in the first place, 
so that they might have an easy passage. In 
two or three days they all seemed to be lying 
round loose on the top, and I planted them an 
inch deep. Then I did n't see them at all for so 
long that I took them up again, and planted them 
half-way between. It was of no use. You can- 
not suit people or plants that are determined not 
to be suited. 

Yet, sad as my story is, I cannot regret that I 
came into the country and attempted a garden. 
It has been fruitful in lessons, if in nothing else. 
I have seen how every evil has its compensating 
good. When I am tempted to repine that my 
squashes did not grow, I reflect, that, if they had 
grown, they would probably have all turned into 
pumpkins, or if they had stayed squashes, they 
Avould have been stolen. When it seems a myste- 
rious Providence that kept all my young hopes 
underground, I reflect how fine an illustration I 
should otherwise have lost of what Kossuth calls 
the solidarity of the human race, — what Paul 
alludes to, when he says, if one member suffer, 
all the members suffer with it. I recall with 



78 COUNTRY LIVING. 

grateful tears the sympathy of my neighbors on the 
right hand and on the left, — expressed not only 
by words, but by deeds. In my mind's eye, 
Horatio, I see again the baskets of apples, and 
pears, and tomatoes, and strawberries, — squashes 
too heavy to lift, — and corn sweet as the dews of 
Hymettus, that bore daily witness of human broth- 
erhood. I remember, too, the victory which I 
gained over my own depraved nature. I saw my 
neighbor prosper in everything he undertook. Ni- 
hil tetigit quod non crevit. Fertility found in his 
soil its congenial home, and spanned it with rain- 
bow hues. Every day I walked by his garden and 
saw it putting on its strength, its beautiful gar- 
ments. I had not even the small satisfaction of 
reflecting that, amid all his splendid success, his life 
was cold and cheerless, while mine, amid all its 
failures, was full of warmth, — a reflection which, 
I have often observed, seems to go a great way 
towards making a person contented with his lot, — 
for he had a lovely wife, promising children, and 
the whole village for his friends. Yet, notwith- 
standing all these obstacles, I learned to look over 
his garden-wall with sincere joy. 

There is one provocation, however, which I 
cannot yet bear with equanimity, and which I do 
not believe I shall ever meet without at least a 
spasm of wrath, even if my Christian character 
shall ever become strong enough to preclude abso- 
lute tetanus ; and I do hereby beseech all persons 



MY GARDEN. 



79 



who would not be guilty of the sin of Jeroboam 
who made Israel to sin, who do not wish to have 
on their hands the burden of my ruined tem- 
per, to let me go quietly down into the valley of 
humiliation and oblivion, and not pester 
me, as they have hitherto done from 
all parts of the North- American 
continent, with the infuriating 
question, " How did you 
get on with your 
sard en ? " 



Men and Women. 




\ HAVE read tliat a stranger, passing 
, through certain portions of New Hamp- 
shire, was deeply impressed with the 
^'-^^ rocky nature of the soil and scenery, 
and inquired of a laborer whom he met, " What 
in the world can you raise in a country like this ? " 
" We raise men, sir ! " was the prompt reply. I 
am free to confess that this sounds to me very 
much like a made-up story ; but it will answer 
my purpose just as well, which is simply to in- 
troduce the fact, that, not having found in agricul- 
tural pursuits that eminent satisfaction which I had 
pictured, I occasionally divert myself with specu- 
lations touching men and women. After close 
observation and mature deliberation, I have come 
to the conclusion that, on the whole, men occupy 
vantage-ground. 

I like women. I love them. I glory in them. 
What sight can be more impressive than one' of 
those magnificent creations we often read of, and 
occasionally see, — stately, grand, epic, — with the 



MEN AND WOMEN. 81 

blackness and beauty of night in tlie matchless 
locks that sweep over the calm, still brow, and 
all the starry splendor of a thousand nights in the 
eyes that burn beneath ? What can be more cap- 
tivating than the opening life of a gay little blonde, 
from whose soft curls the flutter never quite dies 
out, whose dimpling smile is only less sweet than 
her tender pensiveness ? Or, passing from these 
types of an extinct womanhood, whose departing 
left but few traces, we see every day pretty, grace- 
ful, and elegant women ; some neat, simple, and 
indistinctly limned ; some standing out in bold re- 
lief, with regal adomings ; and in our daily walks 
we jostle against countless heroines, — self-sacri- 
ficing wives, devoted mothers, noble maidens, who 
bear a hidden grief, who wrestle with a secret foe, 
who silently, if need be, brave the sneer of the 
world, who will die and give no sign, — and we 
cannot choose but admire. Still, narrowino- the 
question down to a point, this is the conclusion 
of the whole matter, — high or low, rich or poor, 
bond or free, 

There is nothing so splendid as a splendid man ! 

I need not search the pages of history for facts 
to confirm my position. I need not point you to 
Mozart, king in the realms of song ; to Napoleon, 
" wrapped in the solitude of his own originality " ; 
to John Bunyan, standing alone on his Delectable 
Mountains ; to Milton, thrusting his wives behind 

4* F 



82 COUNTRY LIVING. 

him when he entered Paradise. . '.They are con- 
fessedly unapproached and inapproachable, and 
therefoi'e would in no wise strengthen my case ; 
for they are unique, not as regards women only, 
but the whole human race. To be a man does 
not necessarily imply to be a Milton. Eighteen 
hundred years furnished but one Napoleon. ('John 
Smiths are born, married, and die by the thou- 
sand, and nothing apparently can be more com- 
monplace than their lives. What advantage, then, 
has John Smith over his wife ? Precisely this. 
Commonplace as is the life of John Smith, the 
life of Mrs. J. S. is still more so. Small as are 
his advantages and opportunities, hers are incom- 
parably smaller ; and so, whether as a man I 
might have sat in kings' palaces, or ground in 
the prison-house of poverty, I put on sackcloth 
and ashes, bewailing my womanhood^ 

Now don't overwhelm me with a torrent of 
platitudes about woman's opportunities for self- 
sacrifice, moral heroism, silent influence, might of 
love, and all that cut-and-dried woman's sphere- 
ism ; pray don't. I know all about it. I could write 
an octavo volume on the subject, with dedication, 
introduction, preface, and appendix ; but just go to 
your window the next rainy day, and notice the 
first woman who passes. See how she is forced to 
concentrate all the energies of mind and body on 
herself and her casings. One delicate hand clings 
desperately to the unwieldy umbrella ; the other 



MEN AND WOMEN. 83 

is ceaselessly struggling to keep firm hold of the 
multitudinous draperies ; and if book, basket, or 
bundle claim a share of her attention, her case 
is pitiable indeed. Down goes one fold upon the 
Avet flagstone, detected only by an ominous flap- 
])ing against the ankles when the garment has 
become saturated, — a loosened hold on the um- 
brella, of which it takes advantage, and immedi- 
ately sways imminent over the gutter, — a con- 
vulsive and random clutch at the petticoats. The 
umbrella righted, a sudden gust of wind threatens 
to bear it away, and, one hand not being sufficient 
to detain it, the other involuntarily comes to the 
rescue, — sweep go the draperies down on the 
pavement ; then another clutch, another adjust- 
ment, — forward ! march ! — and so on to the 
dreary, draggled end. 

Stalk — stalk — stalk — comes up the man be- 
hind her. Stalk — stalk, — he has passed. Stalk 
— stalk — stalk, — he is out of sight before she 
has passed a single block. 

Of course he is. One sinewy hand lightly 
poising his umbrella ; water-proof overcoat " close 
buttoned to the chin " ; tight-fitting trousers tucked 
into enormous India-rubber boots. What is the 
stoi-m to him ? 

Is this a small matter ? Beloved friend, smaller 
matters than these have swayed the world ; and 
ten thousand such small matters mark the child- 
hood, youth, and maturity of twice ten thousand 
small men and women. 



84 COUNTRY LIVING. 

! It is a very small matter for John Smith to take 
a journey of six or eight hundred miles. He 
rushes home from his counting-room, office, or 
workshop, fifteen minutes before the train leaves, 
bids Mrs. S. put a clean shirt or two in his 
valise, takes a cold luncheon, kisses the children 
all round, and perhaps their mother, strides to the 
station, goes in at one end just as the engine is 
puffing out at the other, waits leisurely till the last 
end of the last car is opposite him, throws his 
valise on the platform, grasps the railing, vaults 
lightly up the steps, and in half a minute is talk- 
ing unconcernedly with Mr. Jones, who has prob- 
ably gone through the same performance, barring 
the last half-minute.j 

("But if Mrs. John Smith wishes to pay a ten days' 
visit to her mother, sixty miles away, a fortnight 
is not too much time to devote to preparations. 
Her wardrobe is to be thoroughly overhauled ; 
dresses selected, bought, made ; a dressmaker con- 
sequently to be hunted up and engaged ; old skirts 
adjusted to new basques ; collars mended, whit- 
ened, and clear-starched ; Mr. Smith's shirts, 
stockings, and handkerchiefs placed where he can 
lay his hands on them blindfolded, for no Smith 
ever yet conceived the idea of lifting up one thing 
to find another under it : the various strata of 
rocks being tilted, the genus Smith seems to have 
imbibed the opinion that bureau-drawers should 
be arranged on the same plan. Then there are 



MEN AND WOMEN. 85 

the children to be seen to, the marketing to be ar- 
ranged, Bridget to be admonished, and everything 
in general wound up to go ten days without stop- 
ping or derangement. Consequently, when the 
appointed morning comes, and with it the ap- 
pointed coach, Mrs. Smith is not quite ready. 
With one cheek flushed, and no collar, she gives 
hurried directions, ties up brown-paper packages 
with nervous, trembling fingers, which packages no 
sooner receive the final jerk than they are discov- 
ered to be bursting out at both ends ; scatters the 
young folks hither and thither, running down all 
Avho are not agile enough to get out of the way, 
and is only restrained from scolding outright by a 
dim vision of plunges down embankments, butting 
against opposing engines, splintered bridges, flying 
axles, and life-long separation from beloved ones, 
to which a railroad journey now-a-days renders 
one so fearfully liable. At length, the last knot is 
tied, the last kiss given, and Mrs. S., anxiously 
looking at her watch, stumbles over the hem of 
her dress into the coach, beseeching the driver to 
hurry. He politely says " Yes," but persistently 
drives " No." After what she considers unneces- 
sary delay, she arrives at the station, hurries into 
the ticket-oflfice, tries to hurry open her porte- 
monnaie, but, as that is governed by the Medo- 
Persic laws of inertia and attraction, it refuses to 
be hurried. Hurriedly she asks the ticket-master, 
" Is the train north gone ? " His loud, clear, 



86 COUNTRY LIVING. 

deliberate, " No, ma'am," startles her, and before 
she recovers herself, he has gone to the opposite 
window. She waits her turn again. " How 
long before it goes ? " " Twen-ty — min-utes, — 
ma'am." With a sio-h of minMed relief and Aveari- 
ness she sinks upon a sofa. Time would fail me to 
follow Mrs. S. on her devious way, — to note her 
anxious watch over " great box, little box, band- 
box, and bundle " ; her uncertainty as to which 
train she is to take, and her incessant inquiries of 
every man who approaches ; the intense unrest 
that looks out of her eyes, quivers on her lips, 
trembles in her hands, and flutters in every thread 
of her garments. All these things may only 
provoke a smile, but Mrs. J. S. is tragically in 
earnest. 

Man, too, is independent. He goes where and 
when he lists. He need not be rich to gaze upon 
all the wonders of the New World, all the magnifi- 
cence of the Old. He can shoulder his knapsack, 
and traverse the globe. Every spot consecrated 
by genius, patriotism, suffering, love, is spread 
out before him. Whatever of beautiful, grand, or 
glorious is to be found in art or nature, is his. 
He can people his brain with memories that will 
never die, adorn it with pictures whose colors will 
never fade, treasure up untold wealth for his soul 
to feed on in future years. 

If the day's long toil leave him restless, — if 
throbbing heart or achino; head crave a draught 



MEN AND WOMEN. 87 

of pure elixir, — if the murmur of the waterfall, 
the glow of the stars, or the ever-new splendor 
of the moon lure him out into the night, he goes ; 
and the hush and solitude bring him rest and 
healing; the night sweeps into his soul, and cools 
the fever in his veins. The world recedes. He 
stands face to face with God. He receives again 
the breath of life, and becomes a living soul. 

Alas for a woman ! She can never do a thing 
except gregariously. She has no solitude except 
m the house, which is no solitude at all. She is 
always at the mercy of others' whims, caprices, 
tastes, business engagements, or headaches. If 
she travels, she must partially accommodate her- 
self to somebody's convenience. She must go in 
the beaten track. Her eyes must look right on, 
and her eyelids straight before her. There are 
no wild wanderings at her own sweet will, no 
experimental deviations from the prescribed route, 
no hazardous but delightful flying off in a tan- 
gent on the spur of the moment. She cannot 
separate herself from the past, slough off her iden- 
tity, and become a new being in new scenes. She 
must take her old associations with her, and they 
are a robe of oiled silk, eflPectually excluding the 
new atmosphere which should penetrate to the 
very sources of life. ' She cannot enjoy in quiet- 
ness and silence. She is one of a party, and must 
go into a rapture here and an ecstasy there, and 
give a definite reason for both. She must be 



88 COUNTRY LIVING. 

wakened from a trance of delight by a lisped 
" How beautifid ! " or a quotation from Byron, by 
some one whose knowledge of Byron is derived 
from a gilt volume of " Elegant Extracts," or the 
" American First-Class Book." It is very exas- 
perating. 

I remember well the agonizing stupidity of a 
journey which I once undertook with great ex- 
pectations, Halicariiassus was obliged to leave 
me on the road, and I contemplated a solitary 
completion of my expedition with unbounded de- 
light ; but at the very last moment he hunted up 
an old schoolmate, a planter from the South, and 
consigned me to him, ready invoiced and labelled ! 
I yielded with a resigned and quiet despair. 

He proved to be a very sensible man, and slept 
most of the time, except when I spoke to him, which 
I did occasionally for the sake of seeing him jump. 
He knew that it was not polite for him to sleep, 
but he cherished the pleasing illusion that I did 
not know it, but fancied him lost in profound medi- 
tation. Bless his dear soul ! If he only could 
have known that it was the most agreeable dis- 
position he could possibly have made of himself, — 
though, as far as my observation goes, men cer- 
tainly look better awake than asleep. Slumber is 
not becoming to the masculine gender. Look at 
the next man you see asleep in church. What 
absolute lack of expression ; what falling jaws ; 
what idiocy in the bobbing head ; what lack-lustre 



MEN AND WOMEN. 89 

vacancy about the eyes and in the eyes, when 
they slowly drag themselves open ; how senseless 
are the fingers, and how, when he awakes, he 
half looks about, and then suddenly looks straight 
at the minister for two minutes, and pretends he 
has been awake all the time, just as if everybody 
did n't know. It is as good as a pantomime. But 
I was glad my fellow-traveller slept, for our at- 
tempts at conversation were really distressing to a 
sensitive mind. He had a habit of receiving my 
most trifling remarks with an air of deep solemnity, 
which was very provoking. It is bad enough to 
say foolish things, and to know they are foolish 
when you say them ; but it is a great deal worse 
to have people think that you think you have said 
something wise. Then he never would under- 
stand what I said the first time ; consequently it 
had to be repeated. Now, when you are putting 
about in distress for a remark, you do often seize 
hold of any platitude, and give it audible utter- 
ance, despising yourself all the while ; but after 
it has done duty, and you have shoved it from 
you in disgust, to be forced to stretch out your 
hand and draw it back once more. Eheu ! Our 
conversation might be daguerrotyped thus : — 

I. " This is a fine country." 

He. " Ma'am ? " 

I. " This is a fine country, I said ! " 

He. " Yes, a very fine country ! " Pause. 
Profound meditation on both sides. 



90 COUNTRY LIVING. 

I. " Is that an eagle ? " (with an attempt at 
animation) . 

He. " Ma'am ? " (with a start, and wild, be- 
wildered look). 

I. " I asked if that was an eagle, but he is 
gone now ! " (Of course he was, — a mile off.) 

He. " I don't know, really. I did n't quite 
see him." Relapse into meditation. 

I. " Do we change cars at B ? " 

He. " Ma'am ? " 

I. " Do you know whether we change cars at 
B , sir?" 

He. " I don't know, but I think we do. I 
will ask the conductor ! " 

I. " O, no ! Pray don't, sir ! I dare say we 
shall find out when we get there." Third course 
of meditation, and so on. 

Whenever we did have to change cars, — and 
it seemed to me as if this occurred at irregular 
intervals of from ten to twenty miles — [I desire 
to enter my earnest protest against it. One is 
scarcely seated comfortably, with valise and satchel 
on the floor, shawl on the arm, and bundles tucked 

on the rack, before " Passengers for change 

cars " ; and up must come the satchels with a 
jerk, and down the bundles with a thud, and ofiF 
we elbow our way through a crowd, across a 
dusty track, into another car, wdiere the same 
process is repeated. When people are satisfac- 
torily adjusted, why can't people be let alone ? ] 



MEN AND WOM^N. 91 

As I was saying, whenever we had to change, he 
was sure to be sound asleep, and I would spai-e 
his feelings and not wake him, knowing that the 
people jostling against him in passing would do 
that, and suddenly he would rouse, gaze wildly 
around, and exclaim, " Are you going to get 
out ? " as if all the commotion was caused by me ; 
and I would turn from the window at which I 
had been steadfastly staring, and answer calmly, 
and as if I had just thought of it, " Perhaps we 
would better, sir ; the people seem to be getting 
out ! " And so, by constant watchfulness and stud- 
ied forbearance, I managed to pick up his goods 

for him, and land him safely at H , with great 

respect for his many virtues, and great contempt 
for his qualifications as guide and protector. 

Yet I was currently reported to be travelling 
under tJie care of Mr. Lakeman of Alabama ; as if 
I could n't take care of myself fifty thousand times 
better than that respectable stupidity could take 
care of me. 

Men are strong. They do things, and don't 
mind it. They can open doors in the dampest 
weather. They can unstrap trunks without break- 
ing a blood-vessel, turn keys in a moment which 
Avomen have lost their temper and lamed their 
fingers over for half an hour, look down preci- 
pices and not be dizzy, knock each other prostrate 
and not be stunned. You may strike them with 
all your might on the chest, and it does n't hurt 



92 COUNTRY LIVING. 

them in the least (I mean if you are a woman). 
They never grow nervous and cry. They go up 
stairs three at a time. They put one hand on a 
four-rail fence, and leap it without touching. In 
short, they do everything easily which women try 
to do and cannot. 

Moreover, men are so " easy to get along with." 
They are good-natured, and conveniently blind and 
benevolent. Women criticise you, not unjustly, 
perhaps, but relentlessly. They judge you in de- 
tail, men only in the whole. If your dress is 
neat, well-fitting, and well-toned, men will not 
notice it, except a few man-milliners, and a few 
others who ought to be, and to whose opinion we 
pay no. regard. If you will only sit still, hold up 
your head, and speak when you are spoken to, you 
can be very comfortable. I do not mean that men 
cannot and do not appreciate female brilliancy ; 
but if you are a good listener, and in the right 
receptive mood, you can spend an hour very pleas- 
antly without it. I'But a woman finds out in the 
first three minutes that the fringe on your dress 
is not a match. In four, she has discovered that 
the silk of your sleeves is frayed at the edge. In 
five, that the binding of the heel of your boot is 
worn out. By the sixth, she has satisfactorily as- 
certained, what she suspected the first moment 
she " set her eyes on you," that you trimmed your 
bonnet yourself. The seventh assures her that 
your collar is only " imitation " ; and when you 



MEN AND WOMEN. 93 

part, at the end of ten minutes, she has calculated 
Avith tolerable accuracy the cost of your dress, has 
levelled her mental eyeglass at all your innocent 
little subterfuges, and knows to a dead certainty 
your past history, present circumstances, and future 
prospects. Well, what harm if she does ? None 
in particular. It is only being stretched on the 
rack a little while. You have no reason to be 
ashamed, and you are not ashamed. Your boots 
are only beginning to be shabby, and we all know 
the transitory nature of gtilloon. Your fringe is too 
dark, but you ransacked the city and did your best, 
" angels could no more." You trimmed your bon- 
net yourself, and saved two dollars, which was 
just what you intended to do. " The means were 
worthy, and the end was won." Your lace is not 
real, according to the cant of the shopkeepers ; but 
it is real, — real cotton, real linen, real silk, or what- 
ever the material may be, and you never pretended 
it was Honiton or point ; and if lace is soft and 
white and fine, and sets oflP the throat and wrists 
prettily, I don't see why it may not just as well 
be made in America for two cents a yard, as in 
Paris for two dollars, or two hundred.) In fact, 
this whole matter of lace is something entirely 
beyond my comprehension. Why, I have seen 
women who, in the ordinary affairs of life, were 
neat to a fault, just not fall down and worship a 
bit of dingy, old yellow lace, that looked fit for 
nothing but the Avash-tub ; and, when remonstrated 



94 COUNTRY LIVING. 

with, excuse tliemselves by saying, " Why, it is 
fifty or five hundred years old " ; which may be 
a very lucid explanation, but I cannot say I fully 
understand and appreciate it. 

Men can talk " slang." " Dry up " is nowhere 
forbidden in the Decalogue. Neither the law nor 
the prophets frown on " a thousand of brick." The 
Sermon on the Mount does not discountenance 
" knuckling to " ; but between women and these 
minor immoralities stands an invisible barrier of 
propriety, — waves an abstract flaming sword in 
the hand of Mrs. Grundy, — and we must submit 
to Mrs. Grundy, though the heavens fall. But 
who can reckon up the loss which we sustain ? 

" Dry up," — a lyric poem is sealed in that 
Spartan conciseness. Only have eyes, and you 
shall see a summer brook murmuring through the 
greenwood ; hushed into stillness where the shad- 
ows fall darkly, flashing right merrily where sun- 
light glints through the mermaiden tresses of the 
trees ; mingling its low song with Nature's many- 
toned lyre ; glassing in tricksy, ever-changing 
caricature the damp, soft mosses on its borders ; 
dropping a deeper purple into the cups of bend- 
ing violets ; flinging a roguish little spray against 
the sober old rocks ; cooing small white feet to 
tempt its limpid depths ; frisking with young lambs 
in loving, cool embrace ; curling around smooth- 
faced pebbles in perpetual overflow ; singing, 
dancing, hurrying, scurrying, grave and gay, till 



MEN AND WOMEN. 95 

the baleful dog-star rises, the loitering sun treads 
slowly through the brazen heavens, and the earth 
lies parched and panting in his fierce, fiery clasp. 
Then the brook-music dies away. Softly and 
more softly the ripples sing themselves to sleep. 
The thirsty lambs go sorrowing. The tender feet 
turn back mournfully. The white pebbles rise 
liot and hard. The mosses crisp and wither. 
The violets faint and fade. The last cool moisture 
bi'eathes itself to heaven. Sweet life is quenched. 
The brook is — " dried up," 

What equivalent can your drawing-room gram- 
mar furnish for such a " sunny spot of greenery " ? 

It would be easy to go through a long list of 
tabooed expressions and show how they are in- 
formed and vivified with feminine sweetness, 
brawny vigor, strength of imagination, the play 
of fancy, and the flash of wit. Translate them 
into civilized dialect, — make them presentable at 
your fireside, and immediately the virtue is gone 
out of them. Can the man who simply rebukes 
your proceedings compete for a moment with the 
man wdio comes down upon you like " a thousand 
of brick " ? Would not myriads of men weakly 
agree to a compromise, who would start back in 
horror at the insinuation of knuckling to their 
opponents ? 

I should like to call my luggage " traps," 
and my curiosities " truck and dicker," and my 
weariness " being knocked up," as well as Hali- 



96 COUNTRY LIVING. 

carnassus, but I might as well rob a bank. All 1 
high-handed Mrs. Grundy, little you reck of the 
sinewy giants that you banish from your table ! 
Little you see the nuggets of gold that lie on 
the lips of our brown-fisted, shaggy-haired news- 
boys and cabmen ! 

But if men, in their strength and courage and 
independence, are enviable, men in their gentle- 
ness are irresistible. You expect it in women. 
It is their attribute and characteristic. You do 
not admire its presence so much as you deplore 
or condemn its absence. But manly tenderness 
has a peculiar charm. It is the wild ivy shooting 
over the battlements of some old feudal castle, 
lending grace to solidity, veiling strength with 
beauty. And you meet it everywhere, — in the 
house and by the wayside, in city and country, 
under broadcloth and homespun. The best seat, 
the finest stand-point, the warmest corner, is not 
only offered, but urged upon a woman. You 
may travel from one end of the country to the 
other, and meet not only civility, but the most 
cordial and considerate kindness. You may be 
as ugly as it is possible for virtue to be, and tired 
and travel-stained and stupid, and your neighbor 
of a day will show you all the little attentions 
you could claim from a father or a brother. He 
will place his valise for your footstool and his 
shawl for your pillow, open or close your windoW- 
blind at every turn of the road, point out every 



MEN AND WOMEN. 97 

object of interest, explain everything you don't 
understand, and do a thousand things to make 
your journey pleasant. The roughest laborer Avill 
step out ankle-deep in the " slosh " to give you a 
firm footing ; and if you have the decency to thank 
him, his good-natured face will light up with as 
broad a smile as if you were doing him the great- 
est favor in the world. When a carpenter drags 
the heavy old road-gate — which he has just un- 
hinged to mend — half a dozen rods, to lay it across 
a mud-puddle that a woman, to whom he never 
spoke before and probably never will again, may 
pass over dryshod, it is false to say that the age 
of chivalry is gone. Talk of Sir Walter Raleigh's 
gallantry ! Say rather his shrewdness. Surely 
his was the most economical use to which cloak 
was ever put. What wonderful politeness was 
there in a risking a few yards of plush to win the 
smile of a sovereign whose smiles were " money 
and fame and troops of friends " ? 

I am aware that this universal politeness has 
passed under the ban of certain of my sex, who 
are pleased to consider and designate it as " doll- 
treatment," and resent it accordingly. They ask 
no favors, despise condescensions, and demand 
dues. Very well. They are doubtless conscien- 
tious. If I thought as they do, I should proba- 
bly act as they do. Only I do not. 

Even if this courtesy were a kind of quid pro 
quo, — a superfluity given for an essential taking 
5 G 



98 COUNTRY LIVING. 

away, — a Roland of kindness, thrust upon us for 
an Oliver of right, fraudulently kept back, — why, 
I am afraid I must make the ignoble confession 
that I — believe — I like the Roland better than 
the Oliver, — that is, if we cannot have both, — 
if rights preclude courtesy. It is pleasanter, or, 
as Englishmen would say, "jollier," to sit by the 
flesh-pots of Egypt, than to starve legally in the 
/ promised land. Women would better improve 
the rights they have, a little more, before going 
mad after others that they know not of. It 
seems to me that I have business enough on my 
hands now to occupy three persons at least ; and 
if men will be so good as to do the law-making, 
and stock-jobbing, and bribing, and quarrelling, 
and stump-speaking, I will be greatly obliged to 
them. It will give them employment, and take 
them off our hands -for a good part of the day, 
which is very convenient. As the big man said, 
when asked why he let his little wife beat him, 
" It amuses her, and it don't hurt me." 

This is not at all heroic, I know ; and I sup- 
pose, if there was the least probability that any- 
thing would ever come of it, I could work my- 
self up to the proper pitch of indignation, and 
prefer a crust of bread and the right of suffrage 
to enjoying the pleasures of slavery for a season. 
But Plato says it is an awful gift of the gods that 
we can become used to things ; and I have be- 
come so used to this, that, notwithstanding an 



MEN AND WOMEN. 99 

occasional spasm, really I am — pretty well, thank 
you, hut — 

I do not believe that the stream of kindness, 
Avhich flows so continually from men to usward, 
has any such polluted source. It is not under- 
hand, as some would have us believe, nor sinis- 
ter. Men do not systematically oppress us. They 
mean well, only they are a little thick-headed. 
As soon as they see their way clear, they will 
walk in it. Meanwhile comes in this involun- 
tary outgushing, this innate nobility of soul, this 
germ of the possible angel, which I pray God 
may spring up, and bud and blossom into glori- 
ous fruitage. Am I enthusiastic? I have a 
right to be. A nation of men loyal, not to grace, 
beauty, magnificence, but to womanhood, to the 
highest impulses of fallen human nature, to the 
love element of the universe, is a thing to be 
enthusiastic about. " I will indulge my sacred 
fiiry." 

I have somcAvliere read that, in a part of the 
Jewish worship, the men say, " I thank thee, O 
God, that thou hast not made me a woman " ; 
and the women devoutly and meekly follow, " I 
thank thee, O God, that thou hast made me as 
it pleased thee." The first is the language of 
nature, the second of grace. The first is physi- 
ology, and impracticable to us ; the second, phi- 
losophy, and attainable. Let us take courage. 

From the confession of faith which I have 



100 COUNTRY LIVING. 

made, it will readily be inferred that I have no 
petty spite to gratify, but that I, speak more in 
sorrow than in anger when I say that men do 
sometimes act like downright — persons devoid 
of sense (dictionary definition of a word which I 
refi'ain from using for courteous reasons), and it 
really is necessary to fall back on undisputed 
proofs of their common sense in other matters, 
to convince ourselves that this is only a mono- 
stuUitia. 

I do not blame men for not understanding 
women. It is, perhaps, not in the nature of 
things. Two organisms so delicate, yet so dis- 
tinct, — so often parallel, yet so entirely integral, 
— can perhaps never be thoroughly understood 
objectively. But I do blame them for obsti- 
nately persisting in the belief that they do when 
they don't. Instead of going quietly on their 
Avay, and letting us go quietly on ours, giving 
and receiving help when it is needed, and stand- 
ing kindly aloof when it is not, they are continu- 
ally projecting themselves mto our sphere, putting 
their officious shoulders to our wheels, poking 
their prurient fingers into our pies. They seem 
to have no idea that there is any corner of our 
hearts so hidden that their halfpenny tallow-can- 
dles cannot illuminate it ; and, at the first symp- 
tom of doubt, the tallow-candles are accordingly 
produced. Assuming that they are entirely con- 
versant with woman's nature, conscious with all 



MEN AND WOMEN. 101 

their stolidity that there is friction someAvhere, 
and perfectly confident that they can tinker us 
up " as good as new," with the best of motives 
and the clumsiest of hands, they begin forthwith 
to hammer away, right and left, on the delicate 
wheels and springs, till we are forced to cry out, 
" Dear souls, we know you are good and honest 
and sincere. You would die for us ; but your 
fingers are all thumbs. Let us alone ! " Do 
you think they will? Not they. Undaunted by 
their want of success, apparently even uncon- 
scious of it, they ding on doggedly, and if conti- 
nuity, persistence, inflexibility, and a continual 
harping on the same string, could have reformed 
us, we should have been reformed into the seventh 
heaven long ago. But God works by means. 
Water does not spontaneously run up hill. No 
combination of numbers can make two and two 
equal five. The strength of Samson would not 
enable a man to lift himself to the stars, bv pull- 
ing at the strap of his boots. So the Conflict of 
Ages goes on. 

O, if those who are at such infinite pains to 
teach woman her duties, and make her contented 
with her lot, would but stop a moment to take 
their reckonings, and compare notes ! " Go to, 
brothers ; we don't seem to get on very fast. 
There must be a screw loose somewhere. Let 
us investigate." 

Do I flatter myself that what I may say will 



102 COUNTRY LIVING. 

have the slightest tendency to modify the views 
or the practice of any one of my mascuhne read- 
ers, should I be so fortmiate as to have any? 
Not in the least. Though I speak with the 
tongues of men and of angels, yet, of six men 
who should do me the honor to read me, half a 
dozen, invited to deliver an address at the anni- 
versarv of a female boarding-school, would rise 
slowly in their places, smile down a bland and 
benignant compliment on the white-robed beauty 
before them, and glide gracefully into an oily eulo- 
gium upon woman's influence, her humanizing and 
elevating mission, promulgating the novel and 
startling theory that her power is in her heart, not 
in her arm ; that she judges by intuition rather 
than induction ; that her sphere is not on the 
rostrum, but by the fireside ; that she is to rule 
by love, not by fear ; — interspersing some vener- 
able fling at woman's-rights conventions and their 
stroncr-minded leaders, quoting with unutterable 
pathos, 

" I called her angel, but he called her wife," — 

(Query: what right has any man to be calling 
another man's wife angel ?) — and winding up 
gloriously in a metaphoric convulsion. 

Do you ask me, then, why I write ? Because 
I know that I shall be read by girls, and, as we 
have been told nine hundred and ninety-nine 
times, the girls of this generation are to be the 



MEN AND WOMEN. 103 

mothers of the next, and I hope and believe that 
the few crumbs I cast upon the waters will be 
returned to me or mine after many days. 

Boarding-sc^jool anniversaries are becoming a 
part of our institutions, and the above outline is 
no fancy sketch. I once heard a lecturer on 
such an occasion introduce such an address with 
the remark that he was left no choice. The sub- 
ject was forced upon him by the nature of the 
case ; and having thus apologized at the outset, 
he immediately struck the trail, and came in at 
the death handsomely. His voice was melodi- 
ous, his accentuation perfect, his language ele- 
gant, his manner refined. He did in the best 
possible style what needed not to be done at all. 
And he knew that it needed not to be done. 
The very fact that he did apologize indicated that 
he saw the necessity of apologizing. It was as 
if he had said, " My dear girls, I know you are 
bored to death with people's telling you what 
your sphere is, but I must give the screw one 
more twist. I pray you try to bear it ; for what 
the mischief is a man to talk about, if not this?" 
This would not have been dignified, but it would 
have been frank. 

But I take issue on the fact. There is a choice 
of subjects. A man is not confined to this stupid 
treadmill. Girls can understand and appreciate 
a broader sweep of thought. One of the finest 
public addresses I ever heard was on such an occa- 



104 COUNTRY LIVING. 

sion. I have forgotten the defii\ite theme, hut it 
treated of the cultivation of the beautiful, and, 
strange to relate, there was not in it, as far as I 
recollect, a single injunction to w^men to mind 
their own business. Truth obliges me to confess 
that, though all the good people admired it as very 
beautiful, they all added, " but not appropriate." 
In my opinion, however, it was appropriate. In- 
stead of telling us to stop doing nothing, and 
refrain from doing the wrong thing, he showed us 
how to do a right thing ; and no matter if people 
do find fault with a good lecture. It only proves 
that their taste is weakened by long disuse, and 
must be educated up to a higher level. 

That villanous old woman-hater, Alexander 
Pope, avenged himself for the unpardonable supe- 
riority of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's wit to 
his own, and her scornfiil and merry refusal of his 
proffered love, — one shrinks from profaning the 
sacred word by applying it to such mockery of 
the divine passion, — by pattering rhymes against 
the whole sex, as 

" flatter too soft a lasting mark to bear, 
And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair." 

The men of to-day, with all their boasted pro- 
gress, seem to have gone but a step farther. They 
do indeed give us sufficient consistency to beai* 
whatever impress themselves shall stamp, but 
acknowledge no inborn power of self-development. 
Singularly enough, there is a wonderful sameness 



MEN AND WOMEN. 105 

in all their stamps. If we were what men have 
tried to make us, and only that, a man ><J his mark 
would be set upon us with the uniformity of the 
red cross on a flock of sheep. Now, if there were 
in our seminaries only one class of girls, and that 
a class reared in luxurious homes, and tempted by 
mere surfeit of idleness into forbidden paths, there 
would be more excuse for the monotone, though it 
would still be utterly ineffectual ; but, collected as 
our New England schools are, — and I am speak- 
ing now of these particularly, — there is many and 
many a girl in them who has come from a home 
of poverty, some perhaps of ignorance, a few, 
alas ! of vice. He who should be the stay and 
honor of his family is its weakness and shame. A 
frail girl, with a strong heart and a clear brain, 
throws herself in the breach. She studies with 
energy, purpose, and effect. She stands on the 
threshold of womanhood, and turns to take a last 
look at her girlish days. All the luring pictures 
spread out by a poetical speaker her woman's 
heart has already portrayed, and she knows that 
she must resolutely shut her eyes, and turn away 
from them. Maiden hopes, wifely trust, mother's 
love, are not for her. The sacred privacy and 
dear delights of home, 

" The graces and the loves that make 
The music of the march of life," 

she gazes upon with tear-dimmed eyes and pale 
lips ; for between them and her rises a sad vision, 

5* 



106 COUNTRY LIVING. 

— a care-worn mother tottering graveward, broth- 
ers and sisters who will rush into rude, ignorant 
and immature maturity but for her. Her path 
lies straight, but very rough. Duty points with 
stern finger, " This is the way, walk ye in it," 
and Avith silent heroism she presses the thorn to 
her heart, and gathers up her womanly robes, 
trembling, but unwavering. Have you no word 
for her ? You roll out musical periods, exhorting 
her companions to be content with the love that 
waits to receive them with open arms : can you 
not speak a word of comfort to her for whom no 
arms shall ever be outstretched ? Must she feel 
herself exiled from man's sympathy, because a 
man's sin forces her to assume a man's duty? 
The poor ye have always with you, — the or- 
phaned, the unfriended, the faint-hearted. They 
stand alone, and see the jostling, eager, selfish 
crowds go by, and draw back, shrinking and shud- 
dering, but have no sanctuary from the throng. 
Speak to them. Give them your sympathy. 
Show them the dignity of self-respect. From 
your wiser years and your larger experience, as- 
sure them that a crown of thorns nobly worn shall 
become a crown of rejoicing, to be cast before the 
Lord. Strengthen the weak hands and confirm 
the feeble knees, by telling them how duty is 
greater than pleasure, integrity better than happi- 
ness, and he alone rich who is " dowered with the 
hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love." 



MEN AND WOMEN. 107 

O men, O brothers, you talk of woman's influence, 
but you do not know your own. You cannot sus- 
pect how much a true woman dreads your sarcasm, 
who will yet, if need be, brave it unflinchingly, — 
how priceless is your sympathy and approbation to 
the heart that will yet throb just as highly without 
it. Cease to exhaust yourselves on those Avhose 
every step is watched and guarded by home affec- 
tion, who face no sterner " duty than to give 
caresses," who neither need nor heed your injunc- 
tions, and turn to those whose weakness must be 
consolidated into strength, and to whom your ap- 
preciation Avould be as the breath of life. 

Even those whom you do address are not bene- 
fited thereby. Upon the young girl about to leave 
school for her home of comfort and peace and 
plenty, you inculcate the duty of making home 
happy, because you think it is the most appropriate 
thing you can do. Very well, if you will only tell 
her how to do it. But you do not. You utter glit- 
tering and sounding generalities. You are definite 
in your directions only where her way is straight 
ahead. You bid her minister to the wants of her 
parents, to rock the cradle of their declining years 
gently, to tend the couch of sickness, to supply the 
wants of the poor, and be a useful member of 
society. To what end ? All these things she is 
forward to do. She dusts the parlor, sees that the 
guest-chamber is aired, supplies the breakfiist-table 
with flowers, reads to the one or two poor old 



108 COUNTRY LIVING. 

women of the village, tends her garden, teaches in 
the Sunday school, and — what then ? Half her 
time remains on her hands. Her soul is full of 
the nebulse of great thoughts, lofty purposes. Can 
you help her resolve' them into perfect, self-radiant, 
and radiating suns ? From the chaos, as yet with- 
out form and void, will you teach her to evoke a 
world of symmetry and beauty, which God the 
Judge on the Last Day shall pronounce to be very 
good ? You have a pleasant voice, and play well 
on an instrument, but " How shall I make my life 
noble ? " is her eager cry. " How shall I wrest 
from every day the heroism that it holds ? What 
shall I do with my Monday, and Tuesday, and 
Wednesday, — with my June and September ? " 
Can you answer her these questions? Can you 
even mark off a section of the heavens, that she 
may sweep with her telescope, to find the answer ? 
, If you cannot, your words are as idle tales. You 
might just as well repeat your lecture as gay nuns 
do their prayers, — " Our Father, which art in 
heaven, &c., &c., &c.. Amen." Of what con- 
ceivable use is it to tell her that a woman's place 
is the 

" Sweet, safe comer by the household fire, 
Behind the heads of children," 

when the very clay of which the bricks are to be 
made, with which the hearth is to be built, on 
which the fire is to be kindled, around which the 
children are to gather, behind whose heads she 



MEN AND WOMEN. 109 

is to hide, is not yet dug ! This mode of talking 
is all wrong, — to some useless, to others abso- 
lutely hurtful. I have not observed that American 
girls are generally too coy. They do not, to the 
best of my knowledge, evince any conventual epi- 
demic, any unnatural repugnance to the society of 
men, any accountable reluctance to assume the 
duties of wife and mother. A respectable middle- 
aged gentleman, of rare intellectual endowment 
and excellent moral character, tells them, sono- 
rously and seriously, that they will probably be 
married one day, and they would better be getting 
ready for it. He evidently thinks the sweet little 
innocents never heard or thought of such a thing 
before, and would go on burying their curly heads 
in books, and sicklying their rosy faces with " the 
pale cast of thought " till the end of time, if he 
did not stir up their pure minds by way of remem- 
brance. My dear sir, a good many of your art- 
less hearers think of nothins; else from mornino; 
till night. They talk of their wedding-ring long 
before they can give you a definition of the circle 
which is its form. They are firm believers in the 
truth of the principle, that it is better to be ready 
and not go, than to go and not be ready ; and they 
have already decided to be married in church with 
the Episcopal form, because it is so much more 
impressive. To us who are behind the scenes, 
and know all this, your exhortations sound, to say 
the least, rather funnv ; and we cannot avoid the 



110 COUNTRY LIVING. 

faintest soupgon of a suspicion that you are carry- 
ing coals to Newcastle. 

" Of all the blind fanatics in this perverse 
world," says one writer, " your professed hater of 
fanaticism is the most inveterate and conspicuous ; 
of all agitators, your determined foe to agitation 
is the most pestilent and eflPective. Many an ex- 
citement has been kept up long after it would have 
died a natural death, by the wrong-headed hostility 
of those who had determined and proclaimed that 
it should be suppressed instanter."" These men 
have profound faith in the vis inertics. Like the 
dog Noble, they believe that a squirrel once in 
a hole cannot by any possibility have got out 
again. If Avomen are ever caught doino; a fool- 
ish thing, men evidently fancy that they must be 
keeping up a steady doing it. Many years ago, 
women compressed themselves suicidally in steel 
and whalebone, and, though the custom is dead 
and buried beyond all hope of resurrection, there 
are men not a few who will go down to their 
graves in the firm belief that women are killing 
themselves off by thousands with tight lacing 
Here and there a foolish girl is said to have been 
found on damp pavements with thin shoes. Cor- 
ollary : no end of homilies on the folly and wick- 
edness of sacrificing health to beauty. A handful 
of women have occasionally amused themselves by 
thrusting a long stick into the mud-puddle of so- 
ciety, and forthwith what a hubbub among the ani- 



MEN AND WOMEN. Ill 

malculne ! Fie ! fie ! Do men really believe that 
the mass of women are possessed with an insane 
and insatiable desire to distinguish themselves be- 
fore the world? Nothing is farther from the truth. 
A decade of years may perhaps produce as many 
women who see fairer pictures than in the house- 
hold fire, who find sweeter music than the lisping 
voice of childhood, but such cases are very rare. 
On the contrary, women need to be roused rather 
than repressed. They are far too apt to be con- 
tent with small attainments and ignoble ends. 
This woman's rights aoitation is but the natural 
reaction from frivolity, aimlessness, inanity. It is 
only a move too far in the right direction, or rather 
an injudicious means to compass worthy ends. I 
can far more readily sympathize with those who 
are, blindly and blunderingly it may be, but hon- 
estly, endeavoring to right the wrong, than with 
those who weakly acquiesce. When such things 
as these happen without comment, — that a school 
for boys and girls is changed into one for girls 
only, the boys being removed with their " excel- 
lent and efficient Principal " to another, and the 
girls remaining behind with their female assistant, 
who receives less than half the salary of her male 
predecessor, — when a father on his death-bed is 
allowed by law to bequeath the only child of his 
wife to strangers, and that child is torn from her 
widowed bosom, and all her prayers and tears 
and agony of love are of no avail, — do you won- 



112 COUNTRY LIVING. 

der that a woman can help thinking, if she has 
any think in her ? And if she be a woman of 
energy, accustomed to act as well as think, and 
if the men around her be stupid or indifferent, 
is it strange that, with her burning sense of wrong, 
her woman's intense hatred of injustice and sym- 
pathy with the oppressed, she should herself strive 
to redress the grievance ? And if so be the reins 
shall slacken in her imwonted hand, — if her 
feeble fingers essay in vain to stay her steed of 
heaven, — if, on the sharp thorns or jagged rocks 
of some untrodden mountain-side, you shall see 
her womanhood lie, bleeding, shattered, formless, 
— you may weep and wail, but — mock, if you 
dare ! 

They, therefore, are right — right in their prem- 
ises, though wrong in their conclusions — who 
dolefully affirm our Female Conventions and things 
of that ilk to be the sad results of our free society. 
They are the results of free society ; just as the 
smoke and soot and cinders belched forth by 
George Stephenson's first locomotive engine were 
the results of the practical application of a great 
principle, — the might of matter quelled by the 
might of mind. But just as the more perfect 
elucidation of that principle converted this very 
smoke and soot into a motive power, so will free 
society, when it has learned wisdom, turn all this 
surplus activity into its proper channels, and make 
all things work together for good, — which is God. 



MEN AND WOMEN. 113 

Newspaper readers will perhaps remember a 
statement, originating, I am sorry to say, in Mas- 
sachusetts, but copied by our enlightened free 
press as accurately, extensively, and intelligently 
as a flock of sheep follow their leader over the 
gap in a stone fence. I am sorry that I cannot 
give the paragraph exactly ; the writer seemed to 
have bovmced suddenly against the fact, that there 
are not so many marriages in the country as there 
used to be, and ought to be. Being greatly exer- 
cised thereby, he casts about for a cause and a 
remedy for this deplorable state of things. In a 
fi'enzy of haste, he seizes his cudgel, and bangs 
away at Avhatever comes within his reach ; and, 
as he could not walk up and down the fine old 
high street of his native city without seeing troops 
of handsomely-dressed women, he " falls to " upon 
female extravao;ance. " I have found it ! I have 
found it ! " he cries with ill-concealed exultation ; 
and his sorrow for the fact is for a moment over- 
powered by raptlire at his own sagacity in discov- 
ering it. " It costs so much to support a wife, 
that is the reason why the young men don't marry. 
They feel that they must wait till their income 
is enough to maintain a wife in the style to which 
she has been accustomed. Girls think they must 
begin where their mothers leave off," &c. The 
mother, too, receives her share of the blame, and 
generally the lion's share ; for it somehow happens 
in almost all these jeremiades, that the father comes 



114 COUNTRY LIVING. 

off scot-free. Then statistics are duly produced 
to show the quantity of silks, laces, velvets, and 
feathers yearly imported, and the whole ends with 
a dismal groan over the degeneracy of the nine- 
teenth century, and a prolonged howl for the mel- 
ancholy prospects of the twentieth, in case there 
should be any twentieth. 

Now this is an elevated way of treating tlie sub- 
ject, is it not ? Are we not placed in a dignified 
position ? They come to us with a silk in one 
hand, and a husband in the other, — " Which will 
you choose? You can't have both. Come, now, 
there 's a dear, wear calico, and it shall have a 
nice little husband, so it shall." Girls, don't do 
it ! There are thousands more women than men 
in New England, and the chances are that you 
lose both husband and dress. The husband if 
you can, but at any rate make sure of the silk. 
It is your duty to dress as well and look as pretty 
as you can, consistently with your other duties. 
You are to be guided by what is right, not by 
what a rabble of men may like. And, above all 
things, don't retrench because men threaten not 
to marry you unless you do. Just let them try 
it, and see who will hold out the longest. 

But, as a matter of fact, the statement is false, 
— at least to this extent, that women are, if any- 
thing, less extravagant than men. They dress up, 
not down, to their fithers', and brothers', and 
husbands' wishes. I do not believe there is one 



MEN AND WOMEN. 115 

woman in five hundred in New England, who, 
if frankly informed of the sources and amount of 
her husband's income, would not cheerfully and 
handsomely bring her expenses within it. Women 
do undoubtedly spend a great deal of money ; 
but if their fathers or husbands give it to them 
to spend, why should they be blamed ? How 
many foilures, I beg to know, have been laid on 
the shoulders of women the last few years ? But 
when the numbers are counted up and handed 
in, will the statistician be so good as to tell us in 
how many cases the husband had been in the 
habit of making his wife conversant with the state 
of his affairs, — how many times the wife knew, 
or had any means of knowing, what the amount 
of her expenses for the year ought to be. 

There are very few men "who are capable of tell- 
ing whether a woman is extravagant or not. It 
is very dangerous to attempt to judge the cost of 
her dress from its appearance. It is not the most 
showy things that cost the most, nor the most sim- 
ple that cost the least. It is not the most ele- 
gantly, not even the most richly-dressed woman, 
who runs up the highest bill. I know women 
who tread royally in satin and velvet, who enter- 
tain magnificently, and give generously, who yet 
can economically, and do merrily, spend hour 
after hour in making mosquito-bars, covering otto- 
mans, putting locks on doors, upholstering old 
chairs quite " as weel's the new," mending sewing- 



116 COUNTRY LIVING. 

machines, and by thousands of ingenious and 
happy devices saving money from animal wants, 
to spend it in generous, intellectual, and social 
pleasures. If your lady-love's dress does not of- 
fend yonr taste, my fine fellow, never trouble 
yourself about its price ; for the flounces which 
make you so uneasy are seven years old, and 
redeemed from a dress which her mother cast 
off when she went into mourning ; — the velvet 
basque, which you must allow to be very becom- 
ing, is the joint product of two worn-out cloaks 
of her sisters ; — the bonnet was made by herself 
from a lace veil that has been in the family for 
years, and all the while she was pricking her soft 
fingers over it, she smiled unconsciously at the 
thought of pleasing your eyes ; and this is all the 
thanks she gets for it. Insensate ! Look at her 
face. Is it blank? To her conversation. Is it 
stale, flat, and unprofitable ? Find out the stuff 
of which she is made, — the texture of her soul. 
If there is a jewel, wear it on your brow and in 
your heart, though the casket be gold. If there 
is a treasure, make it yours, though the vessel be 
rarest Sevres China. If she does not love you 
enough to prefer poverty with you to wealth 
without you, her love is little worth. The fault 
is not that her purse is full, but that her heart 
is empty. You insult not womanhood merely, 
but human nature, by supposing that the inci- 
dents of life are more valuable than life itself. 



MEN AND WOMEN. 117 

You discover innate meanness in that you can 
conceive of a love influenced by dollars and cents. 
What kind of aftection, pray, is that which counts 
the cost, and coolly compares chances ? If you 
are a true man and she is a true woman, you will 
so enfold her life, so fill her heart and her eyes, 
that she will have no power to perceive any lack. 
If you are not true, you have no right to marry 
her or any one else. Begone ! 

" But," moans our editor, " a man who finds he 
has married a Avardrobe and a piano, and not a liv- 
ing, loving woman, is most egregiously taken in." 
Of course he is, and deserves to be. Why did he 
marry the wardrobe ? Whose fault is it ? The 
world was all before him. What right has any 
man to marry a woman before he knows whether 
she is a wardrobe or not, — where her dress ends 
and her soul begins ? He has every opportunity 
for knowing ; and if he does not choose to take 
the trouble, let him not complain. He at least 
has no cause to cry foul play. The game was not 
even, inasmuch as his superiority gave him the 
advantage ; and if a man finds himself check- 
mated by a wardrobe, more shame to him, but 
don't let him come whimpering to us for pity and 
sympathy. I for one feel very much as did the 
old woman witnessing, with arms akimbo, the con- 
flict between her husband and a bear, " Go it, hus- 
band ! Go it, bear ! I donH care toJdcJi beats I ^^ 

" O, if parents in educating their daughters 



118 COUNTRY LIVING. 

would but insist upon their having a reasonable 
notion of what it is to be a wife, rather than upon 
a smattering of French, and a little thrumming 
upon the piano, there would be such a revolution," 
continues our disconsolate author. (I should like 
first privately to put the question, whether any 
man ever wrote upon any subject connected with 
woman, Avithout being sure, somewhere in the 
course of his article, to trot out that unflago-ing 
piano. I have heard many musical performances 
in my day, but I never was so tired of hearing 
any girl thrum upon a rosewood instrument, as 
I am of hearing men thrum on this imaginary 
one.) But what do you mean, you talkers and 
writers, in saying that girls should be educated to 
be Avives and mothers ? Is not a wife a woman ? 
Is there any special course of instruction to be 
followed ? Is not that education the best which 
most fully develops every power, — moral,, mental, 
and physical ? Womanhood is greater than wife- 
hood. It comprehends and embraces it. The 
best woman will make the best wife. If the mind 
of a woman is dwarfed, and her faculties weak- 
ened by disuse, she will be an inefficient wife, 
because she is an inefficient woman. If, on the 
other hand, her mind is trained, her judgment 
cultivated, her powers developed, she will b'e ade- 
quate to any emergency as woman or wife. Soul 
is stronger than circumstance. If a girl is a fool 
in silks, will she be any the less a fool in calico? 



MEN AND WOMEN. 119 

Does a feeble, frivolous nature grow strong and 
self-reliant, by being transferred from a palace to 
a cottage. What folly is this ? Let girls be 
taught to make the most of themselves. Let 
them fulfil present duties, and the future will 
take care of itself She who walks grandly as a 
woman will not Avalk unworthily as a wife. She 
who stands upright alone, will not drag her hus- 
band downward. She who guides her own life 
wisely and well, will not rule her household with 
an erring hand. Familiarity with the details of 
domestic management will be a help, but want 
of familiarity will not be an insurmountable ob- 
stacle. 

I lay this down as a self-evident proposition : 
a woman of sense, married to the right man, can 
do anything. 

But you, O maidens and matrons beloved, you 
are greatly to be blamed for this style of acting 
and tone of thinking. You care too little to be, 
and too much to seem. You must command, not 
ask, respect. You must not complain of contempt, 
so long as you are contemptible. There is no 
power to keep you permanently below or above 
your proper level. Li this great rolling sea of 
society, you will sink or sw^im according to jour 
specific gravity. If you are stupid and heavy, 
plump you will go to the bottom where you be- 
long. If you are light and empty, — no cargo, 
no ballast, no rudder, — you will be tossed about 



120 COUNTRY LIVING. 

by every eddy, aimless and useless, except as 
the toy of an hour. You must be well pro- 
portioned, well provisioned, with adequate ma- 
chinery in good working order, if you would 
ride the waves proudly and make your haven 
successfully. Remember this. Whatever is done 
for you must be done by you. All real improve- 
ment must work from within outward. Woman's 
incapacity is the only real barrier to woman's 
progress. Whenever women show themselves 
able, men will show themselves willing. This 
is what you need, — strength, calibre. You do 
not set half enough value on muscular power. 
-(Esthetic young lady-writers and sentimental 
penny-a-liners have imbibed and propagated the 
idea, that feebleness and fragility are womanly 
and fascinating. The result is, a legion of languid 
headaches, an interesting inability to walk half 
a dozen consecutive miles, a delicate horror of 
open windows, northwest wind, and wholesome 
rain-storms. There is no computing the amount 
of charming invalidism following in the wake of 
such a line as 

" There is a sweetness in woman's decay," — 
a lengthened sweetness long drawn out by some 
compliant and imitative females. I do not, of 
course, refer to real invalids, who have inherited 
feeble constitutions, and, by unavoidable and often 
unselfish and unceasing wear and tear, have ex- 
hausted their small capital, and to whom life is 



MEN AND WOMEN. 121 

become one long scene of weariness and pain. 
Heaven help them bear the burden ; and they 
do bear it nobly, often accomplishing what ought 
to make their ruddy and robust sisters blush for 
shame at their own inefficiency. I mean women 
who have every opportunity to be healthy, but 
who are not healthy, — who are sick when it is 
their duty to be well. A woman of twenty, in 
comfortable circumstances, ought to be as much 
ashamed of being dyspeptic as of being drunk. 
Fathers and mothers, burdened with cares and 
anxieties, may neglect physiological laws without 
impugning their moral character ; but for a girl, 
care-free, to confess such an impeachment, is pre- 
sumptive evidence of gluttony, laziness, or igno- 
rance, and generally all three. This is not ele- 
gant language, I know ; but when we have learned 
to call things by their right names, we shall have 
taken one step towards the millennium ; and it 
is nn indisputable fact, that a great majority of 
ailments arise from over-eating and under-exer- 
cising. The innumerable hosts of nervous diseases 
with which our women are afflicted are always 
aggravated, and often caused, by these indulgences. 
Women do not know this, and if they did, it 
w'ould be of little use, so long as they consider 
illness one of the charms of beauty. Let the idea 
once get firm hold, that illness is stupid and vulgar, 
and a generation or two — nay, even a year or 
two — would show a marked chano;e. If a woman 

6 



122 COUNTRY LIVING. 

is ill, let her take it for gi'antecl that it is her 
first business to get well, and let her forthwith set 
about it. A good stout will, a resolute purpose, 
would work wonders. " Few persons like sick 
people," says Charles Lamb ; " as for me, I can- 
didly confess I hate them." Whatever poetasters 
sing, you may depend upon it, a good digestion 
is " an excellent thing in a woman." 

Health once re-established, let women next di- 
vest themselves of the idea that moral w^eakness is 
an essential attribute of a well-developed charac- 
ter. It is a pandering to masculine prejudices 
with which I have no patience. If there is any- 
thing more disagreeable than your strong-minded 
women, it is she who denounces them to ingratiate 
herself with men, — who obtrudes herself as not 
being one of them. Whenever prominent Avomen 
are made the subject of conversation by men, if 
there is a possible peg in their character or course 
on which a commendation can be hung, be sure you 
hang it. Scold them or spurn them jirivately as 
much as you think they deserve, but defend them 
publicly as much as you can. Scorn the meanness 
of striving to attract men's admiration by affecting 
little weaknesses. "I dislike to travel alone," 
said a young lady ; " I always feel as depend- 
ent as a child." Dependent on what ? Whom ? 
How? It is exceedingly disagreeable to be obliged 
to sit on the same seat with a person who evident- 
ly does not believe that man is an amphibious ani- 



MEN AND WOMEN. 123 

mal. It is not pleasant to elbow your way through 
a mob of vociferous hackmen. You feel safer and 
far more comfortable to be under the care of a good 
traveller; but that the necessity of independent 
and intelligent action should produce a feeling of 
dependence, indicates an unsoundness somewhere 
which should be looked after at once. I know no 
risks in ordinary travelling so great that one should 
pi'efer an indifferent companion to one's own soci- 
ety. I do not believe men apotheosize this amiable 
incapacity to the extent supposed ; but what if they 
do ? God does not. He gave every muscle and 
nerve, every power and faculty, to be used. He 
never intended that we should effervesce in a sigh, 
or collapse to a shadow. If men think so, it only 
shows that they need, as the Brahmin said, " to 
have a little more intellect put into them." 

The old oak quivers through all its tremulous 
leaves at the passing of the softest summer breeze ; 
but deep hidden in the heart of its greenness flows 
its sap of life ; and away down under the ground 
spread out its roots of strength; and it stands the 
storms of a hundred years ; nor does it murmur 
out a less delicious music in June, because the 
skirring blasts of December have no power to de- 
stroy. They make a great mistake, who think a 
strong, bi'ave, self-poised woman is unwomanly. 
The stronger she is, the truer she is to her wo- 
manly instincts, — the more unswervingly does she 
point to the mysterious pole-star of her woman- 



124 COUNTRY LIVING. 

hood. A feeble soul loves, hates, wills, feebly. 
It is only those who have borne the burden and 
heat of the day who know the blessedness of the 
evening-tide. It is only those who have walked 
well, unsiistained, who fully appreciate the unut- 
terable happiness of leaning on a stronger arm. 
Love is like the cholera, dysentery, and other 
acute diseases. An emaciated, sickly nature takes 
it lightly, and recovers quickly ; but with your 
generous, hearty, healthy, robust, vigorous souls, 
it goes hard. Ten to one if they ever recover ; 
and when they do, they bear the scars for life. 
Do not, therefore, fear to be too strong. Be not 
afraid to grapple with the higher mathematics, lest 
you should be called strong-minded. " Sir ! " 
thundered the rhinoceros-hided Ursa Major of the 
eighteenth century, " what harm does it do a man 
to call him Holofernes ? " What harm, indeed, 
in beino; called strong-minded ? It is better than 
weak-minded. Do whatever you think, on ma- 
ture deliberation, you ought to do. " Be sure you 
are right, and then go ahead." Never mind what 
men think about it. I do not mean that you are 
not to try or to wish to please them. It is both 
natural and proper. But do it honestly and open- 
ly. Have a benevolent desire to give pleasure, 
and it is very probable that the innocent desire to 
please will be gratified. If you cannot please 
without being false to yourself, you wovild better 
displease. Admiration gained by slurring over 



3IEN AND WOMEN. 125 

your convictions, or refraining from having any, is 
dearly bought. Best of all, take no thought of 
pleasing. Have no anxiety about it. Make your- 
self worthy of love, admiration, reverence, and 
you will always hold trumps. 

" Woman's devotion " is another theme which 
has been run into the ground. Orators extol it. 
Editors paragraph it. Poets rhyme it, and women 
exemplify the old proverb, " Give a dog a bad 
name, and kill him." But devotion, of itself, has 
no moral character. It is simply stickiness, shared 
in common, and to a far greater degree, by oysters, 
molasses, blood-suckers, court-plaster, and office- 
seekers. Intelligent, voluntary devotion — devo- 
tion to a great principle endangered, to justice 
though obscured, to nobility though persecuted 

— is good. But a discerning public utters devout 
moral reflections over a wife's devotion to her 
scamp of a husband. He commits theft, and is 
thrown into prison ; he is unkind and brutal in his 
treatment of her ; or he is coolly indifferent to her 
happiness, and alive to the charms of other women, 

— but still she clings to him with all a woman's 
devotion. 

Now I beg to ask this question. When a 
woman marries, what does she marry? Is it a 
coat, moustache, and umbrella ? If it is, then so 
long as the coat, moustache, and umbrella are 
extant, she does well to devote herself to them 
with constancy and fervor. But if, as is popu- 



126 COUNTRY LIVING. 

larly supposed, she marries a soul, a heart, a 
character, then, when she discovers that the soul 
rung false, the heart is not there, and the char- 
acter assumed, I do not see what there is to cling 
to, nor Vhere is the merit in clinging. You 
love what you think a man is, not necessarily 
what he is. You cherish reverently a lock of 
hair, because it once shaded the brow of an ab- 
sent friend ; but when you find that you have 
been deceived, and that it is only from the head 
of Tom, Dick, or Harry, who happened to be 
tonsured at the same time and place, you cast it 
from you in disgust. We admire Satan, appear- 
ing to us as an angel of light ; but when the 
horns protrude, shall we still cling to them with 
woman's devotion ? Heaven forbid ! Do I then 
aver that a woman may break away from her 
marriage vows so soon as she becomes dissatis- 
fied with her husband? No more than I would 
advise you to burn down your house because it 
is not built according to contract. You may 
alter it if you can, and if not, you must make the 
best of ,it as it is. But you need not admire and 
extol it, just as it would have been right for you 
to do if it really were what you wished and 
planned it to be. A woman judges wrong in 
the chief incident of her life. She makes a mis- 
take, whose consequences are far-reaching, and 
very deplorable, but she must bear them. Her 
husband's neglect or refusal to fulfil his part of 



MEN AND WOMEN. 127 

the contract does not justify her non-fulfilment 
any further than is necessary. I say than is ne- 
cessary^ for the promise is of such a nature that 
I do not see how it is in her power to keep the 
whole of it, and, consequently, what is the pos- 
sible use of making it. She vows to love, honor, 
and obey ; but love and honor do not depend on 
the will. You cannot love a man if he has not 
the qualities Avhich inspire love, nor honor him 
when he ceases to be honorable. God, it is true, 
commands vis to love him ; but his character is 
such that it needs only to be considered to be 
adored. Man is a long way from Divinity, and 
our feelings towards him cannot be bespoken be- 
forehand. They are entirely contingent on his 
deserts, which are variable. Therefore, a woman 
promises to do what is quite beyond the sphere 
of her volition, and she can neither keep nor 
break her promise. But for her OAvn soul's sake 
she must maintain her integrity. She must be 
faithful and just and gentle and blameless. If 
she does more than this, — if she is so unfortu- 
nately constituted that she still prostrates herself 
before the fi'agments of her broken and debased 
idol, — she is to be pitied. She is not to be 
praised. 

For a grand nature in ruins we may have a 
mournful and tender reverence. For a nature 
which we thought grand, but which proved to 
be petty, we have only contempt. 



128 COUNTRY LIVING. 

This idea of devotion is sometimes carried to a 
most unreasonable, unjust, and miscliievous extent. 

John Jones and Sarah Smith played together 
when they were little children, and took sleigh- 
rides tog-ether when they had become great chil- 
dren. He has given her innumerable ribbons 
and flowers and candies, and she has worked 
him a watch-case, a guard-chain, and a pair of" 
slippers. Of course, they are " engaged." So 
says the world of Onionville, and so, very likely, 
they think themselves. At least, they have as 
yet formed no higher ideas of happiness than to 
gather flowers and work watch-cases for each 
other all their lives long. Presently John's 
father removes to the city, and John goes to 
school, and' subsequently to college, and then to 
a theological seminary. All this while he cher- 
ishes a beautiful and fragrant memory, and looks 
forward with a young man's ardor to the time 
when boyish and girlish fancy shall be moulded 
into mature and undying love. In the mean 
time his mind becomes cultivated by reading and 
study, his manners polished by mingling with 
beauty and refinement. He visits his early home, 
and rushes into the presence of Sarah Smith. 
What? Is that Sarah Smith? Is that girl in a 
green and blue broad-striped de laine dress, with 
a bright plaid ribbon pinned round her neck, and 
a silver w;atch, — is that the fair dream he has 
borne in his heart these years ? To be sure there 



MEN AXD WOMEN. 129 

are rosy cheeks and bright eyes and a buxom 
lass; but — but — alas! poor John. He has 
shrined her in the secret chambers of his sonl so 
long, but his soul-love grew with his growth and 
strengthened with his strength, and Sarah Smith 
did not. Walking alone by the river-side where 
he so often walked with her, " What shall I do ? " 
is the question that ever and ever recurs. He is 
disappointed and miserable. Like too many of 
us, he finds his idol is but common clay, — very 
common. His, happiness is turned to cinders, 
ashes, and dust. Is she to be the " angel of the 
house " ? Is hers the delicate ethereal nature 
which is to bear him on the white wings of love 
up beyond his lower level? Will she help him 
to be true to himself, to his country, to his God ? 
Aside from himself, can he make her happy? 
Will she not see enough of the disparity between 
them to be discontented and uneasy? Will she 
not be entirely out of her sphere in the circle of 
his educated and accomplished friends ? The 
thouoht makes him hot and nervous. He be- 
comes restless, dissatisfied, and cannot sleep o' 
nights. Finally, after much debating and many 
struggles, he decides that their futui'e paths must 
diverge, and he tells her so very gently and ten- 
derly. She has felt the same thing all along. 
She knows there is something in him to which 
she cannot respond. She feels that a change 
has been going on during the years of their sep- 

6* I 



130 COUNTRY LIVING. 

aration, and that they cannot make each other 
happy. They part friends. She reverences his 
superiority. He respects her good sense. When 
he is gone, she goes to her own room, has a 
" good cry," almost wishes she were safe in 
heaven, but finally thinks she would, on the 
whole, prefer to wait till her little brothers are 
grown up, and on the strength of this postpone- 
ment goes to bed and to sleep, — is paler than 
usual for a while, but her voice soon recovers 
its tone, her cheek its color, her step its elastici- 
ty, and anon she is as merry as before. 

Well, what of it? Nothing, if you would only 
let them alone ; nothing whatever. But you 
won't, — busy, prying, inquisitive, meddlesome, 
mischief-making neighbor that you are. You 
think John left town rather suddenly, and you 
fancy Susan is a little low-spirited ; and because 
Satan can find nothing else for your idle hands to 
do, you put this and that together, and saunter 
over to Mr. Smith's, determined to ferret out the 
whole matter. You find Mrs. Smith alone. You 
talk indifferently on indifferent topics. Sarah 
comes in. You say, smilingly and carelessly, 
(your look is a lie, for you are intensely interested, 
and you want her to think you are not,) " Well, 
Sarah, I suppose that handsome young minister 
is going to carry you oflp pretty soon, according 
to all appearances." (On the contrary, the only 
reason why you came was that, according to all 



MEN AND WOMEN. 131 

appearances, you suppose no such thing.) Sarah 
blushes, laughs an embarrassed little laugh, hesi- 
tates a moment, and leaves the room. Her mother 
says, quietly, " That is all given up." " There I, 
thought so ! " leaps to your lips, but you do not 
say it. You exclaim, " Do tell ! " as if you never 
Avere so surprised in your life ; and though yovi do 
not succeed in extractino; the details of the occur- 
rence, you have in the simple fact sufficient capi- 
tal to do a flourishing business ; so you blazon it 
abroad in Onion ville ; and Onionville, nothing 
loath, takes it up, and at every sewing-circle and 
tea-party where the Smiths happen not to be pres- 
ent, you discuss it in all its bearings. Poor John 
Jones ! Every virtue is torn from him piecemeal, 
till he stands before you a mere skeleton of vices ; 
while Sarah Smith, in your transforming hands, 
becomes an angel of light. " To keep company 
with her when he was nobody, and cast her off 
when he got his learning ! " indignantly exclaims 
one. " Yes," chimes in a second, " he feels very 
grand now, — too proud to take a woman who 
knows how to work. He must have a city lady, 
with her flowers and her flounces." " Well, let 
him have her," says a third, " there '11 no good 
come of it, mark my word. He '11 come to some 
bad end. Never knew it to fail. There 's Captain 
David, dismissed Lucy Perkins, and manned 
Squire Willis's daughter. What with her board- 
ing-school airs and high-flown notions, her pianos 



132 COUNTRY LIVING. 

and her gold chains, and her new cloak every 
year, she soon found the bottom of the Captain's 
purse. And there 's their sons now, what are they 
good for? You'll see"; — and the good woman 
shakes her head ominously. Now, kind-hearted 
people, I respect your sympathy, but what is the 
matter ? Why are you making all this ado ? Do 
you really mean that you would have him marry 
her ? Marry her in the gloom of that cloud which 
darkened his being? Marry her, when between 
his sold and hers there could be no real commun- 
ion ? It is true, that, before he was able to read 
his or her inner history, he deemed her all-suffi- 
cient ; but, discovering his mistake, he would do 
her irreparable wrong if he should allow her to 
go on, unknowing and unsuspecting the discovery, 
— irreparable wrong, to fulfil his promise to the 
letter, when he cannot to the spirit, — irreparable 
wrong, to stand up before God and man, and sol- 
emnly promise love till death, knowing that at the 
very moment the life of love is gone. Alas ! you 
would consign her to a fate compared to which the 
prospect of death is but a pleasing hope, — to the 
cheerless, dreary, desolate doom of an unloved 
and unloving wife. He is not to be blamed. The 
fault, if fault there be, is hers, not his. She knew 
that he was devoting himself to study, and rising 
above his former rank, and she might have done 
the same. The way was open to her, as to him. 
But she preferred to go to huskings and quiltings, 



3IEN AND WOMEN. 133 

to take care of the children, and do the daiiy 
work ; — all very well, and quite proper, only she 
must abide by the consequences. 

But, in fact, what harm is done ? Her happi- 
ness is not destroyed. This little incident is but 
a pebble against the tide. In a year's time, the 
rosy cheeks, the muscular arm, the lithe figure, 
and the strong, elastic spirit, will bless the heart 
and cheer the home of some thriving young farm- 
er ; and a President and all his Cabinet may yet 
be chosen from the healthy, ruddy faces that will 
gather every morning round her wholesome and 
plentiful table. Spare your pity. Of this happy 
home she will be the centre and light and stay. 
In this, her appropriate position, her faculties will 
be brought into full play, her abilities shown to 
the best advantage. Her many and active duties 
will develop vigor of mind and of body. Keen 
intellects and iron nerves, for many generations, 
will rise up and call her blessed. Joined to one 
whom she could not appreciate, nor by whom be 
appreciated, — placed in a sphere for which she 
was unfitted, and which she could not adorn, her 
joyous, bounding, buoyant life would be checked, 
and the poor country minister's wife, harassed, 
careworn, pale, and meek, would go no pleasure 
tour so swiftly as her own pathway to the tomb. 

I am aware that this is only the bright side of 
the picture. Every woman does not take the 
matter so easily. It does not follow, however, 



134 COUNTRY LIVING. 

that the gentleman is any more at fault, or that 
the lady is any more aggrieved. She may be 
only less sensible and humble. Instead of doing 
with all her might whatsoever her hand finds to 
do, the rich and petted Ida, after parting from 
her equally rich and petted Mortimer, grows lan- 
guid and languishing, weeps much, seems to have 
lost all interest in affairs of the world, listens at- 
tentively to discourses turning upon the instability 
of all earthly friendships, but turns a deaf, ear to 
music, except of the H Penseroso key. Doting 
friends mourn over the crushed affections and 
broken heart of the dear girl. 

I know I am naturally cruel. Having no super- 
fluity of heart myself, I am apt to make too little 
allowance for an excess of it in others. But, 
with all sincerity and kindness, I do believe that 
in nine cases out of ten it is the pride that is 
mortified, rather than the heart that is broken. 
Ida knows that, to all intents and purposes, she 
has been weighed in the balance, and found want- 
ing. There may be no real justice in her feeling 
so. She may be vastly superior to her lover. 
Women generally are. But however that may 
be, she knows that she stands before the world 
as one who has given her all, and the gift has 
been rejected. Barkis is not willin'. 

Now if scorn and disdain were her style, you 
would hear nothing of sighing and meanings ; but 
she is not of that calibre, so she becomes gentle, 



MEN AND WOMEN. 135 

pensive, and interesting. I do not blame her for 
her sorrow. I do, indeed, think it would be better 
for her to consider that the man who, after six 
months or a year of acquaintance, is not profoundly- 
impressed with a sense of her superiority, cannot 
be a man whose name she will be honored in as- 
suming, and his memory, therefore, is unworthy 
a regret. Still, if she choose to look at it objec- 
tively rather than subjectively, from the world's 
point of view rather than her own, very w^ell. I 
only insist that she shall not insist uj^on our taking 
her wounded self-love for a broken heart, — her 
disappointment in not becoming the jewelled mis- 
tress of a brown-stone palace, an army of negro 
servants, and a coach and six, for the agony of 
misplaced affections. For look you. Ida's anxious 
parents, in view of her faltering tread and droop- 
ing form, call a family council. The decree goes 
forth that she must travel, and anon they bear 
her hither and thither ; dip her in the surf at 
Newport ; nauseate her with the waters at Sara- 
toga ; deafen her with the roar of Niagara ; ener- 
vate her with the voluptuous airs of the South ; 
tone her up with the breezes of the Alleghanies. 
After undergoing these sundry processes of resus- 
citation, the whole business is " done up " in the 
twinkling of an eye, by the sudden entrance upon 
the stage of a rich, handsome, mustachioed cava- 
lier, who is smitten by the " most musical, most 
melancholy charms " of the fair sufferer, and not 



136 COUNTRY LIVING. 

disenchanted by the excellent name that papa 
bears on Wall Street. Mirth and gayety are re- 
instated, a bridal veil closes the scene, and the 
cracked heart is just as good as new. 

You see I have little faith in dying for love. I 
have, however, great ftiith in moping one's self to 
death out of spite, or stubbornness, or false shame. 
If I am wrong, I am sorry — or glad ; perhaps I 
ought to be glad. At any rate, I am in just that 
state of mind in which I ousht to be under the 
circumstances. If I have injured any one's feel- 
ings by my unbelief, I most humbly beg pardon. 
I dare say I shall die of unrequited love myself 
some day. It would be no more than strict poetic 
justice. " Doubtless God might have made a bet- 
ter berry than a strawberry, but doubtless God 
never did." Doubtless there might be such a 
thing as dying for love, but doubtless there never 
(or seldom) was. In point of fact, there is not a 
great deal of marrying for love. Not that I sup- 
pose all marriages are mercenary. Far from it. 
But people marry for a thousand things, — money 
not only, but a home, beauty, genius, because oth- 
ers do, because it is respectable, convenient, &c. 
Some of these motives are objectionable, some per- 
haps not. When a poor girl, after laying the worn- 
out bodies of her father and mother in the grave, 
sees no prospect before her but unremitting toil, 
loneliness, poverty, and death in the dreary end, 
and marries the kind old physician who has tended 



MEN AND WOMEN. 137 

her parents Avithout prospect of reward ; who has 
been the witness of her assiduity, watchfuhiess, 
generosity, good cheerful sense, and real worth, 
and feels that she would shed upon his widowed 
hearth something of the light of other days, I am 
far from Warning her. She is not false to her 
noblest nature, although perhaps, in the dreams of 
)ier early and happy girlhood, his was not the arm 
she looked to lean on. He will love her with a 
fatherly love ; she will return it with grateful affec- 
tion, and therefore her walk in life will be higher, 
her ends nobler, her benevolence more expansive, 
her womanhood better developed. Though the 
ecstatic glow that flushed her morning sky, when 

" Life went a-Maying, 
With Youth and Hope and Poesy," 

may have faded ; yet a calm serenity — " the sober 
certainty of home-felt bliss " — will enwrap her in 
a holy atmosphere, soft, hazy, and warm-tinted, as 
the beautiful Indian-summer. 

When a young man is captivated by the fall of a 
graceful shoulder, or the twirl of a tiny toe, and on 
the strength of it marches straightway to church, 
and there promises to love and cherish, I shall not 
forbid the banns : 

" Honored well are charms to sell, 
If priests the selling do " ; — 

or, if more practical, and with an eye to the wind- 
ward, he notes that the pretty silk is not new, but 
simply colored, turned upside down, wrong side 



138 COUNTRY LIVING. 

out, with new fringe and trimmings, and new 
waist and sleeves, and bethinks himself how, under 
such management, his narrow cottage walls would 
stretch away into stately halls, — if he can secure 
the fair artisan he is doubtless lucky. I do not 
object. Their talk will be of bread and butter, 
the baby's teething, and the price of turnips ; but 
let them marry. I do say, however, — and am I 
not right? — this is not that resistless tide, which, 
gathering to itself the thousand streams that ripple 
through the quiet meadows of life, sweeps suddenly 
over the heart, bearing down all the old landmarks 
of pride and prejudice ; not that raging and quench- 
less fire which consumes the dross of selfishness, 
and fuses into a glowing devotion every power, 
thought, faculty, and purpose ; not that great, 
deep, absorbing, passionate, deathless love, which, 
having once passed into a soul, can go no more 
out forever. 

I could wish that women were happier. This 
may appear a needless wish to those who look 
only on the surface ; but below the smoothly- 
flowing surface there is an undercurrent which 
the world knoweth not of. There is a restless- 
ness, an unuttered discontent, a vague longing, 
which frets and wears away the cheerfulness and 
happiness of life, particularly in the young. It is 
involuntary, unsought, resisted, but all-powerful. 
Ah ! the capacity for suffering that there is in 
girls, — the capacity, too, for enjoying and for 



MEN AND WOMEN. 139 

acting. It is weighed and measured by those wlio 
are armed for the conflict, gii-ded for the race, 
but for -whom no conflict and no race ever wait. 
It is the slow wasting away of powers that have 
nothing to grasp ; the silent, subtle corrosion of a 
heart turned in upon itself. O girls, everywhere 
waiting and watching for a day that never comes, 
I have seen you. I know you. I have followed 
you through the dreary days that dragged their 
slow leno-th along. I know how the tramp of the 
monotonous years seems to you the dead march 
of your young aspirations, — how the pulse of 
your heart grows fainter and fainter, beneath the 
swelling fountain of tears. 

" Jly heart, and hope, and prayers, and tears, 
Are all with you, are all with you," 

and therefore I have a right to bid you take heart 
and hope, for this very unrest is a sign. It is 
the beating of your soul against its prison-bars. 
It is a token from above, — a voice from the un- 
seen world, bidding you come up higher. It tells 
vou of a level you have not yet reached ; of ener- 
gies not yet developed ; of a life not yet rounded 
off to full perfection. Your soul is unconsciously 
sending out feelers, and they find nothing to grasp. 
The world is six thousand years old, but it has 
not yet learned to use its resources. It knows 
not what to do with you, and you know not what 
to do with yourselves. Your pastors and teach- 
ers exhort you to fear God and keep his command- 



140 COUNTRY LIVING. 

ments ; and you try to do it. But that does not 
fill the void, does not stop the aching, nor soothe 
the unrest. No, and it never will. People may 
talk as much as they choose about the power of 
religion, but it will not satisfy your hungry heart, 
any more than it will your hungry stomach. God 
has given to every appetite its appropriate food, 
to every emotion its corresponding object. He 
has given us means and ends, but we blindly work 
at cross-purposes, and take wrong means for right 
ones, making his word of none effect by our tra- 
ditions. When we ask him for bread, he gives us 
bread ; his children, in all kindness, but ignorantly, 
give us oftentimes a stone. Do not reproach or 
think meanly of yourselves for not being happy. 
If you were absorbed in dress, visiting, pleasure- 
seeking, you would have no discontent ; but would 
it be better so ? If you were identified with any 
great work, anything which could enlist your 
whole being, you feel that it would be different ; 
but women seldom have a great work to do. Their 
work is great only in its results, in the spirit with 
which it is done. It is a vast conglomeration of 
little things. You are where God has placed you, 
or suffered you to be placed, and for our purposes 
now it is all the same. If, in truth as in poetry, 
love could take up the harp of life, and smite 
on all the chords with might, then this chord of 
self would, trembling, pass in music out of sight, 
and this would be better. This self-abnegation is 



MEN AND WOMEN. 141 

perhaps indispensable to womanly completeness. 
Until this chord has been touched, there is no 
diapason. The depths of the soul are unstirred. 
There is a power lying waste, a fountain sealed. 
No character can be perfect which is not symmet- 
rical. You may, you ought to love Christ with 
an overmastering love, but the two are entirely 
distinct. One cannot take the place of the other. 
Every earthly affection should indeed be baptized 
in the heavenly, — but only baptized, not trans- 
muted. I do not think God ever intended it 
should be. 

Have I found you a remedy ? No, certainly. 
I have only pointed out what would be a remedy 
if found, but no searching will ever bring it. It 
comes unsought, if it comes at all. What good 
have I done you, then ? None at all so far ; but 
here is the point where I wish to utter a note of 
warning. Here is where you are in danger of 
mistaking the seeming for the real. Faint and 
famishing, you will eagerly pluck the fair-looking 
apple, and it will turn to dust and ashes in your 
mouth. You would better have died of starvation. 
Because God has made you so that love is your 
life and bi'eath, and you pant and gasp without it, 
you are not to inhale a foul malaria, under the 
mistaken impression that it is mountain air. If 
it be pure, the more you breathe of it the better, 
only be sure it is pure. Therefore .do not love 
indiscriminately. An over-ripe apple falls at the 



142 COUNTRY LIVING. 

first gust, whether into lily-white hands or on the 
unheeding ground. Do not you so ; nor be con-' 
tent with a slight preference, — a pale, nerveless, 
flickering, uncertain emotion, that brings as many 
misgivings as heart-throbs. I have heard of girls 
pausing on the threshold of an engagement, " at 
a stand to know what to do " ! Never allow your- 
self to be in such a position. If you don't know 
what to do, it is the very strongest of all provi- 
dential indications that you are to do nothing. 
By all means, give yourself the benefit of the 
doubt. " Friendship with all, entangling alliances 
with none," is a good motto for women as well 
as for nations. Faithfully adhered to, it will keep 
you free from those little attachments which in- 
sensibly but surely fritter away your power to form 
a lasting and noble one ; while it will no more 
prevent your soul from going out to meet its lord 
and king, when his trumpet sounds, than the 
seven green withes had power to restrain the He- 
brew athlete when his spirit returned to him, after 
its ignoble sleep on a treacherous bosom. 

Do not affect a motive in love. It is not a 
question of motive, but of fact. I have no faith 
in marrying to do good. The end does not sanctify 
the means. If you do all the good you can with 
your own individuality, I do not believe God will 
hold you responsible for anytliing more. Nor, in 
my opinion, does the respectability of the sinner 
diminish the enormity of the sin. I have known 



MEN AND WOMEN. 143 

missionaries, excellent men, buiy their poor wives 
in Hindoo jungles, and return to America to re- 
place them, just as madam sends for a China tea- 
cup to replace the one broken by a careless ser- 
vant. INIen and women combine with Nature to 
abhor a vacuum, and the missionary's loss is often 
far more easily made up than madam the house- 
keeper's. Mysterious wheels, wires, and pulleys 
are set in motion by a clique of mothers in Israel 
behind the scenes, the result of which is, that some 
unoffending, benevolent, and practical Miss Brown 
finds herself suddenly precipitated, nolens volens, 
(generally volens,^ into the arms of the good mis- 
sionary ; — he congratulating himself on the suc- 
cess of his business transaction ; she consoling her- 
self that she has gained an excellent husband, and 
done God service, thereby killing two birds with 
one stone ; and the mothers aforesaid rejoicing in 
their skilful matrimonial diplomacy. Now I affirm 
that it is miserable business the whole of it. It 
may be good manoeuvring, where all manoeuvring 
is out of place. It is an unholy traffic, though all 
the traffickers be members of an orthodox church 
in good and reo'ular standing. It is transferring 
to the head what comes under the jurisdiction of 
the heart. The parties concerned may " live hap- 
pily ever after," but they have no right to expect 
it. Of course, if a woman marries a missionary 
because she loves him, even though her love sprang 
up on his first Transatlantic appearance as a wid- 



144 COUNTRY LIVING. 

ower, and goes to Boorioboola Gha with him, be- 
cause she would rather do it than stay at home 
without him, there is not the shghtest objection ; 
she is quite right ; only let her say so honestly, 
if she feel called upon to say anything. But when 
she explains her marriage by enlarging on her 
sense of duty, the poor little children who stand 
in such pressing need of a mother's care, the 
heathen who are perishing for lack of knowledge, 
why then, I say, if these really are her motives, 
she is wrong, — just as truly, though not perhaps 
as greatly, wrong as she who follows the glitter 
of gold. Let her take a lesson from Jane Eyre 
and St. John, since she has failed to learn it from 
her Bible. If the claims of the heathen urge her 
so irresistibly, let her go to them untrammelled. 
The cause of God is not so desperate that it needs 
to be propped up by a falsehood. 

Nor do I believe in marrying because, as I have 
frequently heard alleged, a woman's nature is such 
that she " must love somebody." In the first 
place, the implied fact is a convenient little fiction. 
There is no sort of necessity for your " loving 
somebody." It may be very pleasant to do so ; 
it may be very distressing not to do so ; but it 
is not immediately fatal. Even if it were, never 
mind. Remember Pompey's sublime words, " It 
is necessary for me to go ; it is not necessary 
for me to live." Death comes to all, and the 
world does not need your bodily presence so much 



MEN AND WOMEN. 145 

as it neetls your moral heroism. If you die rather 
than hve falsely, you will enrich it by one great 
example. Moreover, granting that you " must 
love somebody," does it inevitably follow that you 
" must love " a grown man in possession of a re- 
spectable yearly income ? Look abroad at the or- 
phans, thousands upon thousands, fatherless, moth- 
erless, to whom your love would be as the dew 
of Hermon. Christ's little ones are all around 
you, — the ignorant, the uncared-for, the outcast. 
Lavish on them your irrepressible affection. The 
sunshine of love might melt the ice in which their 
better nature is incrusted, and warm into healthy, 
•vigorous growth the wasting germ of many a virtue. 
The idea, girls, the idea of sacrificing your whole 
life to a so-so sort of person, for the sake of hav- 
ing " somebody to love," in a world so full of 
children that the most excruciating hand-organ 
will in two minutes block up the sidewalk in any 
portion of any city with admiring thi'ongs of white- 
headed urchins ! 

To marry for a home or for happiness is little 
better. A home purchased by the sale of your- 
self is a dear bargain, and happiness is the most 
uncertain shadow you can pursue. It is inciden- 
tal. It comes upon us unexpectedly ; but if we 
set out determinately and definitely in pursuit of it, 
it generally leads us into bogs and quagmires, 
and leaves us there. 

If, instead of promising to love and honor in 
7 J 



146 COUNTRY LIVING. 

the future, custom enjoined a woman, on her mar- 
riage-day, solemnly to aver that she did at that 
moment love and honor, I verily believe there 
would be fewer mock unions. I think it would 
be safer to let the future build itself, takino; care 
to secure in the present a firm foundation, than 
to take the foundation for granted, and proceed 
prematurely to the superstructure. Many women, 
conscientious, but vague, unaccustomed to make 
distinctions, to know clearly the diiference between 
one thing and another, after lono; hesitatino- and 
vacillating, do finally zigzag their way to church, 
and make the most tremendous promises, with a 
misty kind of belief that they shall be able to 
keep them when the indefinitely distant trial 
comes, — who, if the plain question were put to 
them point-blank, " Do you now love and honor 
this man ? " could not find it in their hearts, and 
therefore not in their consciences, to say " Yes," 
and would thereby be saved from a lifetime of 
suffering, perhaps of sin. Yet, I have heard a 
Christian woman seriously advise her young friend 
to accept a marriage proposal, because she " would 
not he likely to do better. A superior ivoman must 
not expect to marry her superior.'''' I have known 
a gentleman write, " I advise you, if an intelligent, 
truly Christian man, who really loves you, wants 
you to marry him, to do so." And a highly moral 
and religious community does not cease to warn 
contumacious maidens of the danger of " going 



MEN AND WOMEN. 147 

through the woods, and picking np a crooked 
stick at last." 

There certainly are occasions on which, if you 
cannot do as you would, it is quite proper to do 
as you can. Nothing can equal a good sweet- 
potato, yet you would be very foolish to throw 
away mashed Irish ones, because the frost has 
destroyed the more saccharine tuber. In default 
of mashed Irish, roasted will have no mean flavor. 
If the potato crop fails, " Boston brown bread," 
fresh from the oven, will enable you to bear the 
loss Avith philosophical resignation, and even boiled 
rice, the most unpretending of all edibles, is better 
than starvation. But a husband is not a potato, 
and if you select him on the same principle, be not 
surprised if you find him extremely indigestible. 

" as the dove, to far Palmyra flying, 

From where her native founts of Antioch beam, 
Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing, 
"Lights sadly at the desei't's bitter stream " ; 

(Perfectly right in the dove.) 

•' So many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring, — 

Love's pure, congenial spring unfound, unquaffed, — 
Suffei's, recoils, then, thirsty and despairing 
Of what it would, descends, and sips the nearest draught," 

and is refreshed and strengthened, just as the ship- 
wrecked sailor is refreshed by the mocking salt 
sea-water, which he bears in frenzy to his fever- 
parched lips. 

Do you now, seeing that I have dealt chiefly 



148 COUNTRY LIVING. 

in negatives, ask me what shall be the token ? 
My dear child, how can I tell? By just as many 
girl's hearts as are throbbing this wide world over, 
by just so many ways will love enter in and take 
possession. Keep your eye single and your heart 
pure, and you will not fail to recognize the heav- 
enly visitant. The molecule of oxygen roams 
lonely through the vast universe, yearning for its 
mate, and finding no rest, till of a sudden it meets 
the molecule of hydrogen in a quiet nook, when 
lo ! a rush, an embrace, and there is no more 
either oxygen or hydrogen, but a diamond drop 
of dew sparkling on the white bosom of the lily. 
So, I suppose, will it be with you, when you meet 
your destiny. A flash, and it is all over. Your 
heart is gone, your power is gone ; power over 
your blood, that plays mad pranks in your cheeks, 
— over your thoughts, that hover continually about 
one spot, — over your memories that wake to music 
only one string, — over yourself henceforth forever- 
more, to be held in solution by a stronger nature 
than your own. Unless your love comes upon 
you thus, like a strong man armed, do not believe 
in it. If you, in cold blood, give up your name, 
your independence, your individuality, for a con- 
sideration, whatever that consideration be, you 
will be a wife only in name. Priestly blessing 
cannot sanctify unholy contract. If you have 
parted with your birthright, what matter whether 
it was for a mess of pottage or a stalled ox ? 



MEN AND WOMEN. 149 

I know, therefore, of no reason why a Avoman 
should marry, except because she cannot help it, — 
because " the spirit of life which dwelleth in the 
most secret chambers of the soul, all trembling, 
speaks these words : ' Behold a god more powerful 
than I.' " 

If your love raises and exalts you, if it helps 
you on your heavenward way, if it brings you 
nearer to God, if it strengthens you to brave 
endurance, stimulates you to heroic action, and 
makes all greatness possible ; if, in one word, it 
possesses itself of you, and sweeps you vip and out 
from the finite to the infinite, as a wave bears 
seaward the strong swimmer, powerless, — you are 
safe. 

If anythiri^ less than this satisfies you, if you 
content yourself with a feeble, sickly sentiment, 
that wilts in the sun and breaks in the storm, 
your soul will surely sufiPer. An inferior nature 
may waken feeling enough to blind you for a little 
while. The cares and pleasures of a busy life may 
twine their rank growth so closely as to hide from 
you for a season the real barrenness of the soil 
beneath. But from the one, twenty, forty years 
that lie before you, shall be born a day on which 
you will awake to know that you cannot give 
without receiving back full measure, life for life. 
And when your dream is dreamed out, you will 
exclaim, more bitterly than the old dame of the 
ballad, — 



150 COUNTRY LIVING. 

" Yesterday I was the Lady of Linn, 
And now I'm but John o' the Scales' wife." 

Your demon of discontent, cast out for a while, 
will return, with seven other spirits more wicked 
than himself, and your last state shall be worse 
than your first. 

Better, a thousand times better, go wandering 
all your life, than bring your household gods under 
an unworthy roof-tree. 

There is, then, a way that seemeth good, but 
the end thereof are the ways of death. With this 
you have nothing to do. 

But settle the point clearly. Know just where 
you stand. Have the boundary-lines accurately 
defined. Be able to give a reason fdi" the hope 
and faith that are in you. Missing i;he crowning 
glory of womanhood, do not childishly depreciate 
it. Do not try to persuade yourself or others that 
you are at the utmost bound of the everlasting; 
hills, quite in the promised land, when in fact you 
only see it through a glass darkly. Meet the fact 
boldly. Courage does not consist in feeling no 
fear, but in conquering fear. Thei-e is no heroism 
in marchins; blindfold through a thousand dangers. 
He is the hero who, seeing the lions on either 
side, goes straight on, because there his duty lies. 
Acknowledge to yourself, " I am not happy. I 
do not like my life. I must be capable of better 
things. I am uneasy, restless, discontented." 
Then, knowing exactly the state of your case. 



MEN AND WOMEN. 151 

apply to youi'self comfort and healing. Remem- 
ber first tliat God reigns. Infinite power is wield- 
ed by infinite love. The fatherly eye that sees 
the sparrows as they fall, will not let you walk 
in a random path. Life is a chain of sequences. 
From the cradle to the grave — ay ! and beyond 
it — stretch the series of cause and effect ; and 
what thou knowest not now, thou shalt know 
hereafter. 

You are in a school carefully graded. When 
you have passed your examination satisfactorily, 
you will be promoted. Just as soon as you have 
got all the discipline which your present circum- 
stances have for you, you will be surrounded by 
new. Just as soon as you are fitted for a higher 
career, the gates will be flung wide open to you. 
You can know exactly what is best for you only by 
observing what is. You think you could do some- 
thing better, something greater. Do you perfectly 
accomplish everything that you undertake ? Until 
you perform in the best possible manner every- 
thing which it is at present your duty to do, you 
have no right to complain of your contracted sphere. 
Why reach out among the stars for a treasure 
that lies at your feet ? Be faithful over a few 
things, before you repine at not being made ruler 
over many things. You may talk of opposing 
friends, unfavoring circumstances, adverse fate ; 
but circumstances are full of Divinity, planning 
and directing. We are not the children of Fate, 



152 COUNTRY LIVING. 

but the children of our Father in Heaven ; and 
when the Heaven-appointed hour is come, fate, 
friend, and circumstance vs^ill swell the tide that 
shall bear us out triumphantly to the bosom of the 
boundless sea. 

Another thing remember. Threescore years 
and ten are not the whole of life. We say that 
we know it, but we act as if we knew it not. 
With our lips we aflirm ; but with our lives we 
deny. Blind and eager, we grasp for all our good 
things now. We weep and moan and faint, be- 
cause for a moment we are hungry and thirsty. 
We forget that God has not put us in this world 
to be happy, but to be trained. It is true that 
there is a great deal of happiness thrown in ; and 
we find it so delightful, that w^e are apt to sub- 
stitute it for the real end of hfe, and mourn that 
we cannot accomplish it ; which is as if children, 
having feasted on their Christmas candy, should 
cry to be fed on it all the year round. Life is 
one combined and continuous process and proof. 
Riches, poverty, happiness, miseiy, education, ig- 
norance, are so many chisels to form and touch- 
stones to try our characters. One substance stands 
fire, another water. If you reverse the trial, it 
is fruitless. One soul must be purified by pros- 
perity, another by adversity ; one in society, an- 
other in solitude. Who dare be so presumptuous 
as to say, " This is not the right kind of test for 
me. My character would be better developed 



MEN AND WOMEN. 153 

and ascertained in such and such circumstances." 
" Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? " 
You pant for activity and exertion. You are in- 
genious, constructive, fertile in devices, skilful in 
combination, rapid in execution. You want a 
subject, a field, a career. Very well. Find one 
or make one, if you can. Exert yourself to the 
utmost. Move heaven and earth ; but, having 
done all without success, decide conclusively that 
your lesson is to be learned in another school, 
and reflect peacefully that " they also serve who 
only stand and wait." Bring this principle in 
prematurely, and you will be an indolent, ineffi- 
cient cumberer of the ground. Leave it out of 
view entirely, and you will be a pricking, irri- 
tating thorn in all sensible and sensitive flesh. 
Apply it just at the right time, and the world 
will be better for your having lived in it. 

As for a little happiness, more or less, never 
mind it. Be content to put it off. When the 
Shekinah dwelt in the Holy of Holies, did the 
high-priest note in passing that the porch of the 
temple was shrouded in twilight? Believe what 
you say you believe, that there is a life beyond 
death. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy 
cometli in the morning. It is only for a little 
while. Can you not for a little while be brave to 
bear and to do ? The fulness of joy, the perfec- 
tion of beino- beloncp to another world. The secret 
of contentment is not the gratification nor the cru- 
7* 



154 COUNTRY LIVING. 

cifixion of every right desire, but faith in their uki- 
mate fulfihnent. 

" He who sees the future sure, 
The baffling present may endure." 

If God. has happiness in store for you here, it \\\\\ 
surely come ; you need not stir to find it. If he 
has not, all effort is vain ; no movement of yours 
will bring it. Therefore be calm. 

Now, if you suppose that I wish to sublimate 
you into an airy nothing, — a cross between the 
patient Griselda and a Romish saint, I have only 
to inform you that you are entirely mistaken. 
Though I would have you depend chiefly for your 
happiness on the next world, I would also have 
you, by all means, make the most of this. It is 
very certain that there is a heaven, but earth is 
also a fixed fact. It may be very pleasant to die, 
but for the present your especial business is to live ; 
and if you can't be as happy as you would like to 
be, be as happy as you can. Because you can't 
get what you want, don't throw away what you 
can get. Squeeze out of the world all the juice 
there is in it. It is a mistake to suppose that you 
must be either at the brow or at the foot of the 
hill. There are many steps between, some of 
which command a charming view, and all a new 
horizon. Because you are not particularly happy, 
don't condemn yourself to particular misery. It 
is possible to sleep soundly, eat heartily, and be 
on the whole very comfortable, without being in 



MEN AND WOMEN. 155 

a rapturous frame of mind. Only, when you are 
simply comfortable, don't pretend that you are ti-e- 
mendously happy. There is nothing to be gained 
b}' the deception ; and if there were, you don't 
want to gain it. Do with your might whatsoever 
your hand finds to do. Sympathize largely. Don't 
merely tiy to feel, but feel. Associate with chil- 
dren, not to harass them by continually setting 
them right, — which is of no use, since they will 
inevitably and immediately fall back into their 
original sin, — but make yourself one with them. 
Nothing pays so well. I think it is the easiest of 
all ways to amuse yourself and benefit others. But 
don't confine yourself to any one class. When- 
ever anybody's orbit intersects yours, make some- 
thing come of it. Sink a shaft wherever there is 
the least probability of water. Find out the secret 
place where abideth the soul of your Irish " girl." 
See if there may not be something in common be- 
tween you and your washerwoinan, your seam- 
stress, your chambermaid, your cook. If there is 
a single plank in their platform on which you can 
stand, join hands thereon, and give one throb to 
the heart of humanity. Do not wait supinely for 
opportunity, but go out and seek her in the high- 
ways and hedges. Be alive at every pore. Make 
your soul great with unceasing benevolence. Make 
common cause with virtue against temptation, with 
goodness against wickedness, with right against 
might. If truth is solvent in falsehood, precipitate 



156 COUNTRY LIVING. 

the truth, and cast out the false. Do not be intimi- 
dated because human nature is not every inch a 
saint, nor cajoled because it is not every inch a 
satan. This great world is a j^owerful diluent. 
Accustom yourself to analyze, and, having decided 
deliberately, maintain stoutly. However weak, 
unpopular, or ridiculed the just cause may be, let 
it find in you an unflinching and impartial sup- 
porter ; — impartial, for women are too apt, having 
once espoused a cause, to cling to it " with woman's 
devotion," right or wrong ; or, having rejected it, 
to fancy no good thing can come therefrom. If 
you approve one thing and condemn another, both 
of which Mrs. Grundy alike condemns, don't ab- 
stain from saying so for fear of being called incon- 
sistent. If to-day you approve any measure which 
yesterday you condemned, don't be afraid to say 
so for fear of being deemed fickle. Is it not Rus- 
kin who says that he has little faith in an opinion 
till he has changed it three times? Pope asks 
what changing the mind is, but saying we are 
wiser to-day than we Avere yesterday. And Rus- 
kin again bids us say wliat we think to-day in 
words as hard as cannon-balls, and say what we 
think to-morrow in words just as hard, no matter 
if one assertion flatly contradict the other. Con- 
sistency is the bugbear of small, inactive minds. 
A living soul, grappling with the great truths of 
the present, has no leisure to go digging among 
last year's ruins to see whether the two sets dove- 



MEN AND WOMEN. 157 

tail exactly. Let bygones be bygones. Let the 
dead past bury its dead. A sincere and honest 
life will arrange itself. All opinions and beliefs, 
intelligently and conscientiously adopted, will group 
themselves into a beautiful mosaic, which you can- 
not now see because you are too near, and must 
behold one at a time ; but when a stand-point in 
the other world gives you the proper focal distance, 
you will behold, with wonder and admiration, how 
the most diverse and the most similar were alike 
necessary to form a perfect and artistic whole. 

There are sorrows that spring from other sources, 
— hope deferred, love wasted, expectation disap- 
pointed, ambition crushed, — noiseless grief that 
saps the foundation, eats into the very penetralia 
of life, of which the whited walls without give no 
sign, though Death riot within, — anguish that 
sweeps over the soul like the desert Simoom, blast- 
ing every green thing, drinking up every fresh 
fountain, leaving in its wake only blackness and 
blankness, — troubles that come naturally, and 
troubles that seem to have been wrenched from 
their places to assail some doomed life, — troubles 
that no wisdom could have averted, and troubles 
w'antonly and wickedly self-inflicted, yet all alike 
sore evils, and of long continuance. There is in 
woman a power of acute suffering, from causes 
which scarcely affect the sterner natui'e of man. 
Repulsive but merciful necessity bears down upon 
liis sorrow, smothering it with rude, relentless 



158 COUNTRY LIVING. 

hand, indeed, but smothering it. Her quieter, 
more monotonous Hfe fans the flames, but gently, 
so that though the bush is burning a long time, 
yet is it not consumed. There are many, I see 
them every day, whose garden of lilies and roses 
is become a howling wilderness. The poetry and 
sprightliness and spring of life are gone forever. 
They walk, perhaps, with downcast, introverted 
eyes. They are called reserved, haughty, cold, 
stupid. Mere thoughtlessness would fain see if 
there is blood beneath the marble, and, drawing 
her bow at venture, sends an arrow quivering into 
the heart of hearts, and goes on her smiling way. 

But all this can and must be borne. The hand 
that metes out the measure to us all never yet held 
false balance. Every pain is instinct with good, if 
you will but have the wisdom to discern it. From 
every bitter, pluck its soul of sweetness. The con- 
flict may be fierce, but who fight for God in the 
fighting grow strong. You may leave the battle- 
field with rent and blood-streaked robes, but with 
a nervous right arm. " Ce n'' est pas la victoire qui 
fait le bonheur des nobles coeurs; c'est la combat^'' — 
(Not the victory, biit the struggle, makes the hap- 
piness of noble hearts), — says a French writer; 
but upon you, if you. will, wait both struggle and 
victory. Strength which a placid life can never 
give may be yours. Heights which unruffled souls 
never attain you can climb if your feet are willing ; 
and from those mountain-tops you will gaze on 



J/EiV AND WOMEN. 159 

such visions as never met the eye of dwellers in 
the valley. 

" Behold yon grotto where the dropping tears 
Are crj'stiiUized to cohimns by long years; 
So shall thy sorrows, child of mighty grief, 
Bear up like pillars for thy soul's relief." 

But if your sorrow is to be thus converted into 
strength, yourself must work the change. It has 
not, as many seem to suppose, an innate, self- 
developing, elevating power. Whether the sculp- 
tor's chisel carve from Parian marble the purity 
and grace of an ideal womanhood, or the grim vis- 
age of a churchyard Death, depends on the hand 
that holds it. The April rain falls alike on the 
gray rock and the brown earth. But the one, un- 
mindful of the treasure, yields it up to the first ray 
of sunshine, the first breath of the west wind, and 
anon is as gray as before. The other takes the 
soft visitor to her kindly bosom, and down out of 
sight the little messenger goes to where young life 
is stirring in the darkness, and there works a mir- 
acle. So your grief will be to you a savor of life 
unto life, or of death unto death, according as you 
use it. If you nurse it, and cherish it, and brood 
over it, and talk about it, it will wax greater and 
greater, filling your vision, shutting out from you 
all sunshine, concentrating upon itself all your 
thoughts, and clinging to you, a huge excrescence, 
instead of entering into your blood and nerves and 
sinews, softening, refining. Christianizing. Grief, 



160 COUNTRY LIVING. 

it is tnily said, is sacred ; but grief brought forward 
promiscuously, harped upon, condoled over, made 
the staple of conversation, becomes rapidly profane. 
Grief is a bond of union between men "svho, how- 
ever dissimilar in other respects, are alike liable to 
its attacks ; but the great world rushes on, and 
cannot loiter long. You must not pull the string 
too hard, or it will break. If you have a sympa- 
thizing friend to whom it would be a relief to un- 
bosom yourself, do so ; but, even then, be careful 
that you do not dwell too long upon, or recur too 
often to, your skeleton. Your friend will grieve 
with you sincerely for a while, but wull presently 
outgrow you. Does this seem harsh ? I trust not. 
Far be it from me to wound those whom God hath 
smitten. I only say what I believe to be true, 
and what, if true, it behooves you to know. It is, 
moreover, best for yourself that your eyes should 
not always be turned inward. To bring happiness 
to others is the surest way to bring it to yourself. 
Apply healing to other minds diseased, and you 
will not fail to heal your own. The law of impene- 
trability obtains in mind as well as in matter. Sor- 
row cannot wholly fill the heart that is occupied 
with others' welfare. Constant melancholy, fur- 
thermore, is constant rebellion. If you will only 
square yourself to God's will, you will command a 
cheerful equanimity. To drag along a miserable, 
fi'etful, repining, or desponding existence, is not 
resignation ; but she who turns away from the 



MEN AND WOMEN. 161 

mound beneath which her first-born lies, back to 
a world which brings only an aching sense of void, 
shrinking from no duty, smiling through eyes that 
Avill ever and anon turn wistfully heavenward, 
showing her sorrow only in the softer footfall, the 
added tenderness of voice, the gentler sympathy, 
the warmer pity with which she binds up the bro- 
ken-hearted, — ah ! she is the true victor. On 
her brow shall the crown be set. 

In the old days, when our fathers were a hand- 
ful of men in a great land, and foe, famine, and 
pestilence threatened destruction to their lessening 
ranks, they nightly laid their dead to rest, levelled 
the frequent graves with surrounding earth, and 
planted in the sacred soil their corn and grain, 
that they might conceal their wealcness from a 
wary and watchful foe. 

So, bury your griefs out of sight, deep, deep, 
where the eye of the Avorld cannot pierce, and 
over them sow with a bountiful hand the seed of 
Christian virtues, and from the ashes of your 
dead hopes shall spring up a living growth of 
Faith, and Patience, and Charity, and Love, be- 
neath whose waving shadow your soul shall calmly 
sit in the evening-tide of a serene life, waiting the 
voice of the Lord. 

But unhappiness cannot be prevented or exter- 
minated by a " whereas, be it resolved " alone. 
Action is not more the chief part of an orator than 
of every other human being. It is the necessity 



162 COUNTRY LIVING. 

of every noble nature. Change is the essence of 
life, and action is continuous change, — wise ac- 
tion, continuous advancement. Whether grief be 
real or imaginary, — and imaginary grief is real, — 
employment is an excellent specific. Ah! that is 
the very thing you want, — something definite to 
do. Well, there is the school-house, which ninety- 
nine girls in a hundred enter, not because they 
feel that they have any particular call that way, 
but because it seems to open the only loop-hole of 
escape from inanity. That you have no taste for 
the work is the smallest possible objection. Good, 
honest people, reasoning a priori., affirm that no 
one can be a good teacher unless he loves teaching. 
Educational conventions and professional periodi- 
cals reiterate the statement, till they perhaps come 
to believe it themselves ; but it is only a popular 
fallacy. In all my life, I have known but one 
woman who really loved teaching for its own sake. 
Some of the best teachers — the most respected 
and the most beloved — have adopted it because 
it Avas the only work that offered ; and, hating it 
most heartily, have accomplished it most success- 
fully. But it is far more probable that, being 
young and inexperienced, you fancy teaching will 
be the " open sesame " to Paradise, — or a triple 
coat of mail against all the ills that flesh is heir to ; 
but you may as well undeceive yourself at once. 
You think it will give you the great desideratum, — 
employment, occupation, something to think about. 



MEN AND WOMEN. 163 

Yes, it will, indeed ; so much, that, if you do all 
that you see standing in need of doing, you will 
require the strength of Hercules and the days of 
the planet Jupiter. If you are strong and healthy, 
you will have the satisfaction of spending five or 
six of the best years of your life in a school, and 
at the expiration of that time be allowed to leave 
with honor, a pale face, disordered nerves, tired 
brain, and shattered constitution. The labor re- 
quired in ordinary schools of the higher class is 
such, that I think a woman of average physical 
strength cannot spend more than four consecu- 
tive years in them without breaking down. The 
draughts on the vital energy are so unceasing, 
that the supply cannot equal the demand, and the 
fountain is exhausted. Of course I refer only to 
teachers of conscience and character. An inef- 
ficient, commonplace routinist can drone on in the 
same rut, ad infinitum, and perhaps give complete 
satisfaction to an astute public. So, if you have 
been tenderly nursed and nurtured, if you have 
indulged an appetite for sick headaches, if you 
have been trained in the belief that rest should 
follow labor, and that the best work can be per- 
formed by the best-conditioned animal, engage to 
" wash for the ladies " at sixpence an hour, or 
enter a bookbindery and be paid by the job, or dig 
clams on the sea-shore and sell them in the shell, 
(which I always fancied must be a delightful occu- 
pation,) or hire yourself out as nurser^^-maid to 



164 COUNTRY LIVING. 

nine small children, but don't enter a public school, 
— and a private school is no better, and a great 
deal worse, since the former only devours you 
piecemeal, but the latter swallows you whole, body 
and soul. * 

But you think it will be so delightful, so juveyies- 
cent, to be surrounded by happy, joyous, bounding 
children. You can quote reams of poetry on the 
subject, — 

" A beautiful, and happy girl," — 

" Child amid the flowers at play," — 

" A simple child, 
That lightly draws its breath," — 

" A baby in a house is a well-spring of pleasure," etc., — 

all of which I am not prepared to contradict ; but 
a hundred and fifty babies in a house, together, 
representing every stage of infancy, from the bread 
and molasses of three years old, to the nuts and 
apple coquetry of thirteen, . will make larger 
draughts on your patience than on your poetry, 
and exercise your judgment more than your im- 
agination. You must divest yourself, as soon as 
possible, of the idea that all children are little 
white-winged angels, with golden curls and rose- 
bud lips. You must prepare yourself for dia- 
monds in the rough, and sometimes for the rough 
without the diamond. Even where there is a 
diamond, you must not expect to polish it in the 
twinkling of an eye. Perhaps it will not flash its 
full lustre till the hand that first made way for its 



MEN AND WOMEN. 165 

gleaming has crumbled into dust. We have all 
read any number of stories about hordes of fero- 
cious boys, who have organized successful and suc- 
cessive rebellions, and ejected a long line of male 
dynasties from the professional chair, but who 
have suddenly been brought to roar you as 
gently as any sucking dove, by the apparition 
of a sweet-faced, low-voiced woman. Now, I 
know that calmness and gentleness and firm- 
ness will work wonders, where passion and vio- 
lence and storm have been only abbots of misrule, 
— and of the whole circle of things that may 
happen to you, this may happen ; but I would 
not advise you to set your heart upon it. If 
you begin with the practical, at least, if not theo- 
logical belief, that the children of men are deceit- 
ful and desperately wicked, prone to evil as the 
sparks are to fly upward, you will be happily 
disappointed, if you are disappointed at all. Ex- 
pect to meet wormwood, senna, and Epsom salts ; 
and if you do find the land overflowing with milk 
and honey, you will be doubly delighted. Be 
prepared to employ sternness of tone, severity of 
manner, and anything else that may be necessary ; 
and if a fair trial convince you that music has 
charms enough to soothe the savages, why then 
all you will have to do will be to sing with all 
your might and main. 

I hope you will not be shocked, and think I 
recommend you to turn into a kind of ogress, 



166 COUNTRY LIVING. 

with the appetite of the Wantley dragon, whose 
ordinary dessert was 

" Poor children three, 
That could not with him grapple, 
But at one sup he ate them up, 
As one would eat an apple"; 

nor into a modern Medusa, with power to trans- 
form the trembling urchins to stone by a look. I 
only wish to give you a hint of unpleasant possi- 
bilities, so that, if your Spanish castle should fall, 
it may not bury you in the ruins. As the Cat 
observed to the Ugly Duckling, " I say disagree- 
able things, but it is for your good." I take it 
for granted that your own hearts will teach you 
enough of love, and the spirit of meekness ; that 
your woman's nature makes it incumbent on one 
to exhort you to let justice temper mercy, rather 
than mercy temper justice. 

There are other stones of stumbling, against 
which you may as well be forewarned. Every 
community that has emerged from a state of bar- 
barism is infested with excellent and exemplary 
individuals, leaning to the " goody — good," ac- 
customed to take things on trust, -who will 
embrace every opportunity to speak a word, in 
season and out of season, especially out of season, 
on the fearful and weighty responsibilities of your 
position. I advise you, as a friend, not to listen 
to them. The comparative amount of your re- 
sponsibility and mine, his, hers, or its, is a thing 
not cognizable by human eves. 



MEN AND WOMEN. 167 

It is not necessarily the man who comes in con- 
tact with the largest number of people who exer- 
cises the most influence. It may be so, but it 
does not follow, and we do not know whether it 
is or not. When John Bunyan was cast into 
Bedford jail, there were doubtless many pious 
souls who mourned that the zeal and power of his 
best years should be thus wasted ; yet through 
those prison-walls there streams a light which 
will grow brighter and brighter, till lost in the 
glory of the Celestial City. Every person is re- 
sponsible for all the good within the scope of his 
abilities, and for no more, — and none can tell 
whose sphere is the largest. A mother, tending 
her child in the quiet seclusion of a Virginian 
home, sees no foreshadowing of a mighty destiny, 
yet there comes a day when an empire's fate 
trembles in the tiny hand now clasping hers. It 
is therefore impertinent to assume that the re- 
sponsibility of teachers, or of any one class of 
people, is greater than that of any other. The 
only difference is, that one influences at first 
hand, another at second or third. At every foot- 
fall, we set in motion a chord whose trembling 
thrills ten thousand more, and will quiver on 
eternally. Every thought and word and deed 
of every human being is followed by its inevitable 
consequence ; for the one we are responsible ; 
with the other we have nothing to do. 

You will also probably encounter a great many 



168 COUNTRY LIVING. 

deprecatory remarks, concerning superficial knowl- 
edge, a smattering of the sciences, &c. Fond 
mammas Avill think they are making a display of 
great and judicious wisdom, in exhorting you to 
render their infants thorough masters of whatever 
study they pursue. Now I think superficial knowl- 
edge is a very good thing ; and, for my own part, 
I should be only too glad to be well-smattered. 
In the first place, complete mastery by school- 
children of any one study is a moral impossibility ; 
not only from the organi-zation of our school system, 
but from the very structure of the human mind. 
Take geography, one of the earliest and perhaps 
the simplest studies attempted. Childish capacity 
cannot seize it in all its bearings, nor is the at- 
tempt to present them w^ise. Many things are 
taught to children which they would be far better 
left to find out for themselves. Let them grow 
up to their difficulties naturally, instead of having 
difficulties thrust upon them from without. If you 
lead them tenderly up to a fact, they will quite 
probably be indifferent, or but partially interested ; 
but if they run against it, they will not leave it 
till they have found whence it came, and why it 
is there. School life should be considered only 
a preparatory course. It is a means, not an end. 
It is what you work out of their minds, and not 
what you put in, that is of importance, f If a boy, 
at the end of his school days, has learned how to 
study, if he has acquired mental, moral, and physi- 



MEN AND WOMEN. 169 

cal self-control, his career is a success, no matter 
how many or how few things he knows. Of all 
the knowledge. learned, he may have forgotten the 
greater part ; but the wisdom which that learning 
brought him is his inalienable estate. You must 
be content to lodge the seed, for April rain and 
May sunshine and June warmth are necessary to 
bring it to perfect fruitage. You may drive the 
nail, but time alone can clinch it^ 

This charge of superficial knowledge is so often 
brought up against women, that I may be pardoned 
for pursuing it a little further, and asking how 
many men there are in America whose knowledge 
of things generally extends far beyond a smatter- 
ing ? I have something more than a suspicion 
that, if the principle should obtain that we are to 
know nothing of a science unless we know that 
science thoroughly, the sphere of our knowledge 
would suffer a sudden collapse. Is it indeed de- 
sirable that we should be entirely ignorant of the 
history of Greece, unless we can become imbued 
with the spirit of her golden age, — entirely con- 
versant with her literature, her antiquities, her 
topography, her climate, her Fauna and Flora, — 
know precisely what tide of religious emotion it 
was that swept over her, bearing on its crested 
wave the Parthenon, — what silent influence of sun 
and shade and dew and rain centred on the crerm 
that sprung up into that magnificent outgrowth of 
national eloquence, whose fruit was Demosthenes 
8 



170 COUNTRY LIVING. 

and his immortal compeers ? Shall we not trace 
the long wanderings of the heroic Ten Thousand, 
and share their madness of delight, when, from 
the heights of the Saci'ed Mountain, their eyes 
beheld the sparkle and glow of the Euxine Sea ; 
or watch " Idalian Aphrodite beautiful " flush 
from the ocean foam, to live in marble forever ; or 
dream in the shadow of Olympus, to the music 
of that harp whose strings have not yet ceased 
to quiver, — because, forsooth, we do not know in 
what city Homer was born, or even whether there 
was any Homer at all ; what force of nature the 
poetic mind of early Greece symbolized in the 
Cytherean myth ; wliat wire-pullers, lobby-mem- 
bers, or Hellenic Maintenon moved the lever that 
thrust the Persians and the Greeks in each others' 
faces ? Nay, verily. The world grew nearly six 
, thousand years before' it flowered in Linnaeus, yet 
every child in our village school-houses will listen 
with appreciative eagerness while you point out to 
them the diiferent parts of a common pea-blossom, 
stamen, pistil, keel, wings, and banner ; every eye 
will sparkle, and every little listener become a 
practical botanist, and bring you specimens from 
every kitchen garden in the neighborhood. The 
Old World of his birth and the New World of 
his adoption alike contend for Agassiz ; but on 
shady Saturdays in May, every brook in New 
England is fringed with ichthyologists in jackets, 
who will tell you the habitat, the breathing ap- 



MEN AND WOMEN. 171 

paratus, the locomotive power, of trout and roach 
and shiner and sucker for miles around. A life- 
time is not too much to spend in the investigation 
of the structure of the earth ; but in three months 
an intelligent boy can learn enough of " rock and 
tree and flowing; water " to oive a new interest 
and beauty to every landscape on which his man- 
hood's eye may rest. Many men have a specialty, 
something towards which they are drawn by an 
ii'resistible impulse, and to which they devote 
themselves with eager and delighted zest. Shall 
they therefore be ignorant of everything else ? 
Many more have no specialty. They have an 
accunuilative, analytic, and critical power, and 
roam at large through many fields. They make 
no new discoveries, and establish no new generali- 
zations, but they are delightful companions, the 
appreciative -welcomers and true interpreters of 
the Master Spirit when he comes. None, so far 
as I know, are thoroughly versed in all branches 
of knowledge ; few, in any one ; but many, very 
many, are sufficiently conversant with a large 
variety to realize the words of the poet, 

" My mind to me a kingdom is." 

I have by no means exhausted the possible ex- 
asperations which society in general will give you, 
if you decide to teach. The man who makes 
your shoes thinks it incumbent upon him to learn 
the trade ; the woman who trims your bonnets 



172 COUNTRY LIVING. 

finds it necessary to serve an apprenticeship ; but 
the world at large, collectively and individually, 
considers itself abundantly qualified to make sug- 
gestions, offer opinions, and pass judgment on so 
simple and easy a matter as teaching ; nor will 
any motive of delicacy prevent its doing so. You 
will also have the satisfaction of knowing that you, 
devoting the prime of your life, are receiving from 
one to three fourths as much money as a boy pre- 
paring for his junior examination would receive in 
the same situation ; or a graduate, laying up money 
for his medical or theological lectures. The sub- 
ject grows too rapidly under my hand, and I be- 
lieve I shall have to devote a separate ti*eatise to 
its discussion ; but I must show you a few gleams 
from the " Sunny Side," before I pass on. 

In the first place, if you wish to love and to be 
loved, it offers you delightful opportunity. You 
will bind fresh young hearts to your own, with a 
tie that time only strengthens and hallows. They 
are too far removed from you to see your faults, 
and they will leave you before they have acquired 
discernment enough to do so. Consequently, you 
will be enshrined in their memories, haloed with 
a glory that is less of your deserts than of their 
imaginings. They will see what you aim to be, 
rather than what you are. They will mark your 
standard, and not your inability to reach it. You 
will be associated with their purest thoughts and 
ambitions, their most innocent joys and simplest 



MEN AND WOMEN. 173 

pleasures, — with all that in after days they will sigh 
to remember, — with the dew and freshness of their 
mornino-. You will also be doino; godlike work, — 
moulding mind, fashioliing material which is inde- 
structible. You will see your influence, as you 
go on from day to day, in the awakening interest, 
the brightening eye, the more thoughtful brow, the 
kinder hand, and warmer heart ; and below the 
surface, below all that you can see, the train you 
have set in motion is going noiselessly on. With- 
out sound of hammer or axe, there is rising a 
beautiful temple, meet residence for the indwell- 
ing of the Holy Spirit. A lovely, gentle woman, 
who went to heaven long ago, probably never 
dreaming of the work she had done, perhaps 
Aveeping that she had been but an unprofitable 
servant, changed the current of at least one life, 
turning it from the valley of the Shadow of 
Death, through the pleasant land of Beulah ; and 
now, years after, a young man, her pupil, writes 
thus tenderly of her : " She has a place in my 
soul, a little inner room, where once dwelt pas- 
sion, gloom, and chaos ; but when she opened it, 
she gently arranged it, dispelled the gloom that 
obscured the window, and till I fall asleep her 
face shall ever meet me there, with all I hold 
most dear." 

To be thus treasured up, not in one soul, but in 
many souls ; to live, not your own life only, but 
hundreds and hundreds of other lives, perhaps 



174 COUNTRY LIVING. 

wiser, purer, or happier than yours ; to be woven 
in with the warp and woof of boyhood's strong, 
firm web ; to gleam and flash through the finer, 
subtler texture of girlhood ; — this is your " ex- 
ceeding great reward," 

Girls generally have more or less taste for 
writino;. If we could believe critics on the sub- 
ject, they take to poetry as naturally as ducks to 
water ; but we do not believe critics, because they 
write from theory, not from observation, and know 
little about the inner life of girls, — actual, every- 
day girlhood. Of all those who are unfitted by 
their organization for a life of inactivity, by their 
moral sense for frivolity, by their position, posses- 
sions, or taste for manual labor, by far the larger 
part will turn to the school-room rather than to 
the pen. Still there are, in the aggregate, many 
who cast wistful and furtive glances towards au- 
thorship. It is to them a 

" Shadowy isle of Eden, lying in dark purple spheres of Sea," — 

a Land of Promise, wreathed in golden mist, in- 
distinctly limned, but wondrous fair. To the high- 
spirited and finely-strung it proffers mental work 
and pleasurable excitement behind an impene- 
trable veil. To the poor and struggling it is a 
mystic Aladdin's lamp, flashing before their daz- 
zled eyes the gleam of gold, paving their way to 
happiness with pearls and diamonds. 

Undoubtedly these castles in the air are not 



MEN AND WOMEN. 175 

" the baseless fabric of a vision," but, like our 
thrilling novels, are founded on fact, perhaps on 
just about as large a proportion of fact. There 
is a charm about writing. I can conceive of few 
things more delightful than to see one's self right- 
angled off in oblong form, on fine Avhite paper, 
with broad margins, clear type, Russian calf, and 
illustrations by Darley. 

If your cistern is over-full, a newspaper is a 
very convenient faucet, if you can unscrew it. I 
know that editors complain bitterly of the multi- 
tudinous pipes directed to their sanctums, and the 
" weak, washy, everlasting flood " with which they 
are inundated ; but I would not hold back on that 
account. What is the use of having newspapers, 
pray, if you cannot write for them? Do dry-goods 
clerks complain because their counters ai^e contin- 
ually strewed with silks and muslins, — because 
they are constantly obliged to arrange, and de- 
range, and rearrange ? Why, it is their business. 
It is a sign of prosperity. A shop whose shelves 
were always in order would be apt to close busi- 
ness in a month, and a newspaper which is not 
sufficiently alive and active to draw into its vortex 
a host of spirits from the vasty deep around it, 
will soon stagnate into decay and death. Besides, 
how small a portion of the whole suffering is borne 
by the editor. It is absolutely appalling to think 
of the hopes and fears, the aspirations and dreams, 
the anxieties, tears, and heart-throbs, the watch- 



176 COUNTRY LIVING. 

ing, waiting, and disappointment, shut up in the 
*' dark drawers " of editorial tables, — those ter- 
rible Black Holes of literature. And the worst 
of it is, that in the great majority of cases the exe- 
cution is merited. I suppose it does sometimes 
happen that wheat and chaff are alike condemned. 
In fact, I know it does. If you should be imperti- 
nent, and ask me how I know, I should follow the 
example of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, 
and simply say, " Nullum tui negotiiJ'' Still, as I 
was remarking, if your poem is not printed, there 
is a presumption, at least, that it was not worth 
printing. 

Men talk as if it were a sin to write, unless the 
writing be of the very highest order. But are all 
preachers Pauls ? all soldiers Bonapartes ? all ac- 
tors Garricks ? all statesmen Washingtons ? Shall 
a woman not dance unless she have the heels of an 
Ellsler, or sing without the voice of a Lind, or 
paint without the pencil of an Angelo ? Would it 
even be better so ? Is there not many a man 
whose pulses thrill to the notes of " Yankee Doo- 
dle," who would sit calm and impassive under 
« Casta Diva " ? 

A certain reviewer said of a certain wi'iter, that 
her poems had done positive harm, — they had 
weakened the English language and perverted the 
English taste ; that it would really be better if she 
had never taken a pen in her hand ; and then he 
pronounced an anathema on the whole race of 



MEN AND WOMEN. 177 

feminine rhymers. Nonsense, again ! Is the 
EngHsh language more important than the Eng- 
hsh heart ? Is the marble statue which the skilful 
artist carves Avith his chisel of greater moment 
than the living soul which he is to shape, " not for 
an age, but for all time," — ay, and for all eter- 
nity ? All over the green fields of England, and 
under the blue skies of America, hearts have 
throbbed and eyes have filled with tears at a wo- 
man's simple songs. Of what use is it, then, for a 
critic to rise up in his self-conceit and say, " This 
is not poetry ; this is all sentiment ; it ought not 
to be written ; it is not Miltonian nor Spenserian 
nor Virgilian nor Dantesque ; it is not written 
according to the rules of high art." 

You may tell a mother that her child's features 
are not Grecian, that his skin is browned and 
freckled by sun and wind, that his hair is coarse 
and his form ungainly ; but will she clasp him to 
her bosom with any the less tenderness, or will she 
thenceforth cease to whisper his name in her morn- 
ing and evening prayer ? The object of poetry is 
to please — and whom? Not the elegant, the cul- 
tivated, the delicately-nurtured, merely ; but the 
poor, the homely, the ignorant, as well. It is to 
polish the rough, to refine the vulgar, to ennoble 
the commonplace, to scatter pearls before those 
who find the path to heaven among the untrodden 
ways of life. Go to now, fools, and slow of heart 
to believe ! There must be vessels of honor and 

8* L 



178 COUNTRY LIVING. 

vessels of dishonor. All stars have not the same 
glory ; but one star diflfereth from another star 
in glory. Homer wrote the Iliad, and Florilla 
Flowerdale writes a Sonnet to a Dew-drop ; and 
though the soul of the one be the basin of an 
ocean, and that of the other a gill dipper, they are 
both full. There is but one Chinese wall, but 
there are many stone fences ; and they are en- 
tirely effectual in keeping the cows from the 
meadow and the sheep from the corn. There 
are but few St. Paul's Cathedrals, but white spires 
peer heavenward from every valley ; and way- 
worn feet tread cheerily thitherward, and many 
souls are refreshed and gladdened. The nightin- 
gale is the sweetest of all birds, but we could ill 
spare from our woodland chorus the notes of the 
robin, the hum of the bee. 

No little confusion of ideas prevails as to what 
constitutes useless and useful, light and heavy lit- 
erature. There are many who open their damp 
Gazettes^ Journals, Chronicles, Couriers, and plod 
through miles of dry, dusty, dreary political edito- 
rials, going to show that the country will sink to 
remediless ruin if Jenkins is elected town-clerk, 
but will rise to untold heights of glory should 
the spotless Muggins radiate his splendor from 
that lofty station ; and they fancy themselves pa- 
triotic, absorbed in noble themes, interested only 
in what is excellent and of good report. Or they 
plunge into the foreign news column, litter their 



MEN AND WOMEN. 179 

brain with the grand dinner given by the Legation 
on somebody's birthday, or the astute prophecies 
of some mercantile agent, whose historical knowl- 
edge is bound up in Whelpley's Compend, con- 
cerning the ultimate fate of Italy, the far-reach- 
ing designs of Louis Napoleon, and the balance 
of power in Europe ; and don't think, probably, 
but have a kind of pleasant, unconscious feeling, 
that they ai-e employing their vast intellect on 
abstruse and Aveighty matters. Or they watch the 
light-heeled Blondin on his tight rope, admire the 
financial operations of enterprising scoundrels, mar- 
vel at the manifold and ino;enious crimes brought 
to light in New York, and call this " intelligent," 
"well-informed," — "keeping up with the times"; 
while they pass over the stories, the essays, the 
poetry, to their wives and daughters, as light read- 
ing, quite too small for the attention of their stu- 
pendous minds. 

But a story or a poem may comprehend the 
whole duty of man. I have read such a one. I 
recollect "Herman, or Young Knighthood," which 
contained not only more wit, but more wisdom, — 
not only more beauty, but more grandeur, — not 
only more play of fancy, more power of imagina- 
tion, more directness of purpose, more felicity of 
expression, and more elegance of diction, but more 
knowledge of human nature, more soundness of 
judgment, grander conceptions of human aspira- 
tions and human capacity to love and to suffer, to 



180 COUNTRY LIVING. 

enjoy, to act, to die, and to rise again, — a vaster 
sweep of thought, broader generalization, more 
comprehensive views, more logical and accurate 
reasoning, nicer analysis, and a higher standard 
of Christian manhood, — than you will find in a 
column of your " solid reading " that would reach 
from Maine to Georgia? 
' People must live their life, one way or another, 
f — on battle-field or quarter-deck ; in cabinet, lab- 
oratory, pulpit, or nursery. Boys expend theirs 
on Virgil and candy ; men, on farm and ledger, 
with a small surplus that goes to liquidate the 
claims of Smith and Jones to the suffrages of an 
enlightened community. Girls read Lalla Rookh, 
crotchet lamp-mats, write interminable letters to 
immortal female friendship, and so manage to drain 
oflp their spare life, till, in the course of human 
events, it runs naturally to housekeeping and ba- 
bies, and takes the whole force to keep the mill 
a-going. 

(But sometimes the farm and nursery and work- 
shop do not use up all the fluid ; then, according 
as it makes for itself a channel, or is pent up in 
too narrow bounds, you have Shakespeare chain- 
ing the ages to his triumphal car, or Chatterton 
flinging down life at sixteen years as a burden 
too heavy to be borne. You have Raleigh, leav- 
ing the apple-orchards of beautiful Devon for an 
unknown Land of Faery, a new Jason, wander- 
ing world-wide for a golden fleece ; Spenser, walk- 



MEX AND WOMEN. 181 

ino- Avitli Genii in enchanted woods, and weaving 
a mi<ditier spell than they ; Burns, upheaving not 
only the soil with his plough, but the land with 
his song ; Browning, voicing on her many-stringed 
lyre the "Cry of the Children" who pass through 
the fire to Moloch ; Bront^, chained to her deso- 
late rock, and eating her own heart out with a 
sharper than Promethean torture ; Stowe, throw- 
mg open to the shuddering day a sepulchre fiill of 
dead men's bones, and all uncleanness ; Sappho, 
harping her own requiem on the Leucadian cliff; 
Socrates, calmly quenching with hemlock the life 
that would no otherwise be stayed ; Dante, gazing 
in rapt beatific vision on the glorified face of Bea- 
trice ; Galileo, spinning the world around in spite 
of the pious dunces who sat on it in solemn con- 
clave to hold it down ; Kane, walking in silence 
with the Spirit of Storms ; Paul, transported with 
a holy ardor, denouncing woe to himself if he rein 
in the fiery words that leap to his lips ; David, the 
stripling, ruddy, and of a beautiful countenance, 
changed by the spear-touch of an heroic purpose 
from the dreaming shepherd-boy to the champion 
of Israel ; and William of Orange, and Alfred the 
Great, and Milton, and Tasso, and Napoleon, and 
Homer, and Mozart. 3 

Corollary 1. Everybody has just so much life 
to live, and if it is dammed uj) in one direction it 
Avill overflow in another. 

Corollary 2. Greatness, heroism, glory, spring 



182 COUNTRY LIVING. 

from what is left over and above necessity. That 
is, some people have just soul enough for salt. You 
cannot conceive a further diminution of their men- 
tal endowments unattended by immediate physical 
decomposition. Of course they have nothing to 
spare for fame. But the highest must have body 
as well as the lowest intellect. The body is the 
strong cord which keeps the " animula vagula blan- 
dula " from flying off in a tangent. They cannot 
live in a state of pure mind, any more than the 
others can live in a state of pure matter. Conse- 
(|uently, there is a plane on which they both meet, 
and that plane is bread and butter. But the one 
never soars above it, while the other never remains 
upon it. Herein consists the difference between 
the two. It is from the latter, roaming about in 
the empyrean, that we get our grandeur and sub- 
limity, our pathos and poetry. 

Corollary 3. Female authorship, instead of 
being deprecated, ought to be encouraged as the 
great safety-valve of society ; and those who ridi- 
cule and oppose it show themselves far behind 
the age in endeavoring to put down such an 
army with no better weapon than that where- 
with Samson slew a thousand Philistines fifty 
centuries ago. 

(Many a woman with no pretensions to genius 
walks her daily round, fulfils all wifely duties, 
seems contented and happy in her home of peace 
and plenty, who is nevertheless sometimes lonely 



MEN AND WOMEN. 183 

and dispirited. There are glimmerings of some- 
what higher ; shadowy remembrances of girhsh 
aspirations and heroic purposes ; a sad and eager 
questioning — " Is this all ? " — to the heart that 
vouchsafes no reply. This feeling can find no 
vent like poetry or music. If from the keys of 
her piano or the strings of her harp her troubled 
spirit, Savd-Iike, shall find rest, it is well ; but if 
she have no spell to evoke the genius of song, 
why should you forbid her to give expression by 
rhythmic cadence to the feeling which, unvoiced, 
will be crushed back into the soil whence it 
sprang, to moulder and decay, and cast a mil- 
dew and blight on all the graces, virtues, and 
affections which should adorn and beautify life ? 
The little poem may be simple in thought and 
rugged in outline ; it may be at once consigned 
to the silence of a secret drawer ; but the long- 
ing is gratified, the pent-up mind has found an 
outlet, and the weary woman goes on her way 
rejoicing. Years afterward, when the hand that 
wrote it is cold in the grave, a daughter's eyes, 
it may be, will fall upon it, and a page of that 
mother's history, hitherto all unrevealed, be sud- 
denly illuminated ; and between the daughter 
on earth and the mother in heaven there will 
be another and a golden link, which the world 
knoweth not of.^ 

Girls, do not be deceived. Write, Write 
poetry, — write in rhyme, — if it is only 



184 COUNTRY LIVING. 

" One, two, 
Buckle my shoe; 
Three, four, 
Open the door." 

Form the habit. It is often convenient. It is a 
refuge from ennui. It may do good. Any one 
of you who refrains from writing for fear of 
ridicule, is a coward. Don't be a coward. 
There is not much to a woman at best. She 
is not expected to have physical courage ; but if 
she has not moral, pray, what has slie ? The 
more a man tells you not to write, the more do 
you write. By this I do not mean to say that 
you must immediately publish a volume of 
" Something, and other Poems," though even 
that I advise you to do, if you feel disposed and 
can afford it. It is better than to be talking 
scandal or making flounces. Would-be critics 
lament pathetically or satirize mercilessly this 
" rushing into print." It is mere selfishness on 
their part. You might rush elbow deep into a 
batter pudding, or bury heart and soul and 
mind, beyond all hope of disinterment, beneath a 
confused rubbish of unmended stockings, or by a 
letter of recommendation become the fifth wife of 
some hard-worked, hard-working, broken-down, 
and worn-out missionary, and they would not lift 
a finger to prevent. No, girls ; no. If your 
heart is stirred within you to write, write ! If 
you can find an editor or publisher who is will- 



MEN AND WOMEN. 185 

ing to print for you, print I Somewhere in the 
world, a heart-string may tremble to your feeble 
and unsteady touch, with a strange bliss. I do 
not suppose a line of poetry was ever written, 
from the New Hampshire bard's 

" The beauties of nature, I positive declare 
The beauties of nature are very rich and rare," 

to the stately hexameters of Britain's sturdy old 
Republican, which did not bear a message of joy 
or consolation to some of God's children, — 
whose coming was not watched for, perhaps, by 
many loving eyes, and gazed at with untiring 
satisfaction. Never be concerned about readers. 
You w^ill, at all events, read it yourself, and, bet- 
ter than all, you wdll appreciate it. Your darling 
Arabella will read, admire, and very probably 
cut it out and place it in her scrap-book. What 
is fame, more than this ? 

If you are a little inclined to egotism, and toler- 
ably imaginative, you can trick yourself out in all 
sorts of Protean shapes ; serve yourself up in as 
many different disguises as a French cook does a 
ragout ; and, at the same time, preserve the most 
ricrid reticence : because no one knows how much 
is memory and how much is imagination. Or if 
you have acquired the habit of entertaining views 
of things, it gives you an excellent opportunity to 
exhibit them ; and of the many comfortable things 
in the world, one of the most comfortable is to give 
your views. It is so agreeable to say things, when 



186 COUNTRY LIVING. 

you have things to say. Your opmions may not 
be very striking, or original, or important ; still it 
is a relief to express them. No matter if they 
have been said fifty times before ; you never said 
them. They must go through the crucible of your 
brain before they can be efficient in preventing a 
congestion from plethora of ideas. The stream 
may have meandered down the mountains of life 
a thousand years, and heaped together priceless 
diamonds and ingots of gold, and yet fail in that 
fertilizing power more valuable than all, till it 
sweeps along the rich alluvial deposits that lie in 
the green meadows of your own soul. It does not 
satisfy your craving for the " delicacies of the sea- 
son," to know that salmon and peas have been 
eaten since the world began. 

In so far as literature seems to you a royal road 
to fame and fortune, let me entreat you not to be 
deceived. If you have been put through Watts's 
" Sixteen Rules for Gaining Knowledge and Men- 
tal Improvement " as thoroughly as I, I shall not 
need to say, " Be not so weak as to imagine that 
a life of learning is a life of laziness and ease.", 
But, besides good Dr. Watts's exhortations, the 
testimony of the great mass of writers proclaims, 

" Hard the labor, small the gain, 
Is in making bread from brain." 

I have seen, in several modern American novels, 
certain counter statements. Brilliant but obscure 
young women are represented as having surrep- 



MEN AND WOMEN. 187 

titiuuslj sprung a book upon an unsuspecting pub- 
lic, and being summarily overwhelmed with money, 
and fame, and troops of distinguished friends and 
patrons. I know that charming Fanny Burney 
did really smuggle her Eveline into the world 
without even the complicity of " Daddy Crisp," 
and that there presently fell upon her listening, 
straining, but scarcely expectant ear, a rusthng 
among the mulberry-trees ; coaches blocked up 
the way to the circulating libraries ; Burke sat up 
all night to watch the adventures of a young lady 
upon her first entrance into the world ; fops lev- 
elled their glasses ; women of fashion patronized 
the shrinking authoress ; and the brutal, benevolent 
" Great Cham " coiled his huge arm thrice about 
her slender waist, and bound her to him forever. 
Nor have I any doubt that, notwithstanding Camp- 
bell's savage toast, publishers are often honest, up- 
right, excellent men, many of whom would gladly 
bind up the wounds and bruises which their own 
hands have been forced to inflict. There are indi- 
viduals among them — several I know — who are 
perfect pinks of disinterested kindness, full of good 
works and alms-deeds. Still, I think I do not err 
in affirming that, as a class, they are not large- 
ly addicted to sending huge rolls of spontaneous 
bank-bills to anonymous correspondents. When 
you hear of men's receiving twenty, forty, or a 
hundred dollars a page, and twenty and forty thou- 
sand for a volume of history or romance or science. 



188 COUNTRY LIVING. 

don't think of the forty dollars simply, but of the 
forty years of daily and nightly toil, research, 
study, thought, contrivance, experiment, disap- 
pointment, discouragement, vexation, and heart- 
ache that have preceded them. 

" The crowd, tliey only see the crown, 
They only hear the hymn ; 
They mark not that the cheek is pale, 
And that the eye is dim." 

Do you prize the crown so highly, that you will 
bear the cross ? To be purified by the poet's fire, 
will you endure the anguish of the burning ? Do 
you worship the goddess with so true a faith, that 
you will offer up yourself at her shrine ? 

There are obstacles without as well as within. 
A certain prejudice against female writers " still 
lives." It is fine, subtle, impalpable, but real. It 
is like the great ocean of air that wraps us round. 
A little of it cannot be seen ; it is only in mass 
that it becomes visible. It is like a far-off star ; 
look straight at it, and it is not there ; look askance, 
and it twinkles and winks at you again. It is like 
the Indian in warfare ; it never meets you face to 
face, and takes fair aim, but, darting behind shelter, 
sends a shot obliquely. It is also like the Devil ; 
resist it, and it will flee from you. It is indeed 
vanishing every day ; and as woman gravitates to 
her proper place, and the elements cease to be 
agitated, it wuU entirely disappear. Like other 
fashions founded on whim, caprice, or injustice, 



MEN AND WOMEN 189 

and not on the eternal fitness of things, it will go 
from master to man, from man to scullion, from 
scullion to the dogs. It has already begun its 
downward progress. Large-hearted and large- 
bi'ained men, the monarchs of thought, have flung 
it clean off. The ranks below them, men of small 
capacities but unbounded ambition, who see in 
women their own rivals, — who fear, and justly, 
too, that a fair field and no favor would oust them 
from seats they have questionable claim to fill and 
infinite difficulty to hold, — have caught the flim- 
sy, floating thing, and see but darkly through its 
tremulous shimmer ; and, with limbs tangled in its 
fair, strong, invisible meshes, walk stumbling and 
uncertain. So long as you will lend yourself to 
the amusement of these men, — be witty, playful, 
piquant, affectionate, and saucy ; dance and sparkle 
along their ascending pathway ; circle, as brilliant 
a satellite as you please, round themselves, the 
central, acknowledged sun, — they will shine down 
on you the most benignant and complacent conde- 
scension. But once undertake to set up for your- 
self; get the troublesome idea into your head, that 
that head was given you for something more than 
a series of fireworks ; tell them seriously that you 
have been thinking whether all play may not make 
Gill a mere toy, just as it does Jack, and whether 
there may not be something in the world for you 
to do, — whether the purling, singing, happy brook, 
that now only freshens the violets on its banks. 



190 COUNTRY LIVING. 

may not, by widening and deepening the channel, 
be made subservient to nobler and not less pure 
uses, — whether the same vivacity, compactness, 
and power that enliven the social circle, and fling 
a charm around a few favored lives, may not gleam 
on a broader sphere with no diminished lustre, 
soften the harsh outline of some unwelcome truth 
into grace and loveliness, light up some sombre 
picture with golden tints, polish some hidden blade 
— rusty, disused, and rusty because disused — 
into Damascene gleaming, suppleness, and sharp- 
ness, and restore it once more to the armory of 
God, — and lo ! our respected friend, who, whilom, 
found no words so sweet as fitly could express his 
love, complacence, interest in j^our weal, admira- 
tion of your character, and pride in your reputa- 
tion, cools suddenly down to zero, leans leisurely 
back in his comfortable study-chair, strokes caress- 
ingly his black moustache, and, with eyes turned 
contemplatively ceiling-ward, and infinite and pity- 
ing forbearance of voice and manner : " Yes " 
(with an inflection indicative of mental and sub- 
jective interrogation), — "yes " (falling inflection ; 
interrogation not satisfactorily answered). "You 
may be able to effect something. There are very 
respectable authors among Avomen." (Magnani- 
mous concession !) " There is no doubt that the 
thing is overdone. Still — " and here, or a min- 
ute after, at furthest, he will cut an intellectual 
pirouette, and, with a most frank, arch, and en- 



MEN AND WOMEN. 191 

gaging smile, inform you that, after all, he would 
" rather see a ring on your third finger than an 
ink-spot on your first." Stupid ! 

You will often see the outcropping of this feel- 
ing in the criticisms of women's books ; not that 
just and generous criticism which discriminates 
between the evil and the good, condemns the one 
without rancor, and applauds the other without 
servility, but that half-flattering, half-contemptu- 
ous, and wholly contemptible notice, whose com- 
passionate blame and condescending praise are 
alike insulting;. Such was the revenge of some 
of our sleek, respectable, self-admiring male writ- 
ers, when Aurora Leigh dashed in upon their 
fancied security, and shivered her most knightly 
yet right womanly lance against their time-hon- 
ored commonplaces. What a shaking of the 
dry bones there must have been, indeed, under 
the hoofs of her high-mettled steed ! But as 
soon as their spirits returned to them again, 
they fell a-babbling of Socialism, and Fourier- 
ism, and Chartism, and " all the others that end 
in " ism ; and there was poetry in the book, hut 
thei'e Avas a deal of obscurity ; and there was 
felicity of expression, hut there was occasional 
awkwardness ; and there were a great many 
things, hut there were also a great many others ; 
and, on the whole, Aurora Leigh must be pro- 
nounced a failure. Self-blinded ! If Aurora Leigh 
be a woman's failure, what would a woman's 
success be? 



192 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Sometimes this prejudice takes the form of clis- 
intei'ested counsel, paternal and affectionate ad- 
vice ; but through the lion's skin, the long ears 
reveal indubitably the true nature of the animal. 
" Aspiring sisters," says the domestic brute before 
alluded to, " why is the tone of your lucubrations 
always so mournful ? If you must write, write 
cheerfully. Don't let every song be a dirge. We 
want to be amused when we read " (there is the ear 
again) ; " consume in private your private griefs." 
Not a doubt of it. Beyond cavil, it would be 
vastly agreeable to our private Neros, — Heaven 
be praised that they are few, I know that there 
are some, — who harry the life out of wife and 
child, who are tyrants without the fear of assas- 
sination, because their victims are too good, or 
of public opinion, because the thing is done in a 
corner, or of the law, because it takes no cog- 
nizance of soul-murder, — doubtless it would be 
vastly agreeable to them, that women should en- 
dure uncomplainingly. No voice louder than 
theirs in praise of her sweet self-abnegation and 
silent fortitude, or in deprecation of publicly-dis- 
played sorrow, when, in song or story, the minor 
key of sadness, the outburst of long-pent-up 
anguish, or the unmistakable wail of a broken 
heart, sends home to their own breasts the 
prophet's stern charge, " Thou art the man." 
Consume in private your private griefs ! No. 
Take them in a bundle, and bear them to the 



MEN AXD WOMEN. 193. 

liighest mountain-top ; ring the church-bells, hoist 
the flags, beat the drums, and let the whole world 
see the bonfire ; and if the flame scorclies our 
sensitive friends, let theni stand back. Why 
should tliey flutter about it, if they don't want 
their wings singed ? 

Do all or any of these things move you ? Do 
you fear to launch your bark on so unquiet a sea ? 
Do you shrink from the lion without, lest you 
should be slain in the street ? Then by all means 
remain within doors, and hold your peace. Do 
not fancy that you would achieve immortality, if 
you only had the chance, — that you would soar 
sunward, if your wings were not pinioned. 
Genius is expansive, irresistible, and irresistibly 
expansive. If it is in you, no cords can confine 
it. A good book will get itself wi'itten. Author- 
ship is not a thing to be quietly chosen, as cir- 
cumstance may determine. It chooses you ; you 
do not choose it. Did Mrs. Browning sit down 
in her little back parlor, and wonder whether she 
would better fashion a song, or devote herself ex- 
clusively to Robert's shirts and stockings ? And, 
observing that she had facility in language, fa- 
miliarity with the classics, knowledge of human 
nature, and abundant leisure, did she forthwith 
seize her pen, and tell us 

" how a faiiy bride from Italy, 
With smells of oleander in her hair, 
Was coming through the vines " ? 

9 M 



194 COUNTRY LIVING. 

I trow not. I rather believe that her spirit 
groaned, being burdened, — that she was but an 
unwilHng Sibyl, lashed on, foaming, by a fierce 
Apollo. Currer Bell trod in agony the desolate 
heaths of Haworth, till the consuming fire burned 
deep scars in her tortured soul, before Jane Eyre 
leaped, full armed, not from her throbbing brain 
alone, but from her riven heart. 

If prejudice, ignorance, or sloth pile a Hill 
Difficulty which you hesitate to scale ; if indiffer- 
ence, neglect, or rebuff quench your spirit's flow ; 
if encouragement and appreciation must be the 
Aaron and Hur on either side, without whose aid 
your failing hands droop, nerveless ; if you fear 
to speak out boldly your convictions lest you for- 
feit approbation ; if peace and smiles and sun- 
shine seem to you more desirable than truth ; 
if you are not in and of yourself sufficient to 
yourself; if a mind conscious of rectitude, of up- 
right intentions, and honorable performance, is 
not to you a sufficient guerdon, — you may be 

" A perfect woman, nobly planned, 
To warn, to comfort, and command," 

but lyre and tripod are not for you. The world 
awards its meed of praise to no uncertain claimant. 
Only to him that hath shall be given. You go 
out on a mission of high emprise, with scrip and 
staff and " sandal shoon," and there are few to 
say, " God bless you." You return in purple and 
scarlet and fine linen, with gilded chariot and 



MEN AND WOMEN. 195 

liorse of Arabia, and the world comes out to meet 
you, with timbrels and dancing, and ministers 
unto you a triumphal entrance. I do not say that 
this is wrong ; only that it is. You must conquer 
Fate, before Fate will bow the knee. You must 
prove your royal blood, before you can wear the 
royal crown ; and that perhaps so late that it will 
only press, cold and heavy, on aching brows. 

Watchman ! What of the night ? The morn- 
ing Cometh. 

It is not for the generation among whom Eliza- 
beth Browning has sung, and Charlotte Bront^ 
spoken, and Harriet Hosmer chiselled, and Rosa 
Bonheur painted, and Mary Lyon taught, and 
Florence Nightingale lived, to despair of woman's 
achievement of her highest destiny. In whatever 
direction you choose to walk, you will find that 
a firm footfall has preceded yours ; that a strong 
hand has hewed down the giant trees, and cleared 
away the tangled undergrowth, so that the forest 
which once required all a man's strength and a 
woman's fortitude, a child may thrid unharmed. 
Thus do the strong bear the burdens of the weak. 
Thus have noble women made straight, in the 
desert, a highway for our God. " Inasmuch as 
ye have done it unto one of the least of these 
my brethren, ye have done it unto me." The 
costly step has been taken. 

But let us not suppose that generous ends can 
be attained only on the mountain-top. To but 



196 COUNTRY LIVING. 

few is strength given to climb its ragged sides, 
and clearness and breadth of vision to take in the 
broad sweep of its low-lying landscape. Down in 
the valley there is work to be done, — humble, yet 
divine ; small in the germ, yet great in the un- 
folding. However simple or however difficult, 
however obscui'e or however prominent the work 
may be, matters not, provided it be God's ap- 
pointed work. It is better to rule a household 
well, than a kingdom ill. 

" He that sweeps a floor as to God's law, 
Makes that and the action fine." 

The ring on a child's finger is as perfect a circle 
as the zone of this round world. The Dairyman's 
Daughter "just knew, and knew no more, her 
Bible true," lived out her brief and simple life, 
and was not, for God took her. But from her 
humble island home her voice still speaks comfort 
and hope to the ends of the earth. 

Here and there, both in the beaten paths and 
the untrodden ways, on the lowlands and the up- 
lands of life, I meet an angel, — not in white robes, 
garlanded with roses, and winged for Heaven, but 
plain in calico, it may be, or grand in velvet. I 
recall now the face of one whose life is to me a 
constant gospel. A slight, pale girl, orphaned, 
homeless, neglected by those who should have 
watched her young years tenderly, she yet seems 
to have drawn to herself, by some magnetic power, 
all the good of all the persons by whom she has 



MEN AND WOMEN. 197 

been surrounded, and to have fed her own soul 
thereon. She went to school, bearing in her mean 
and scanty dress, her thin cheeks, and hard hands, 
the marks of poverty and toil ; and wild, thought- 
less, elegantly-dressed, and carefully-nurtured girls 
hushed their heedless sarcasm, softened their merry 
voices, and spoke to her with love, and of her with 
tears. Shrinkingly sensitive to their opinions, 
tremblingly alive to her own disadvantages, con- 
scious as she must have been that she served a 
hard taskmaster, no word of complaint ever passed 
her lips. Always cheerful, modest, happy, willing 
to be pleased, grateful for kindness, and patient 
of any chance neglect, you might have supposed 
her entirely msensible to the motives and feelings 
that influence ordinary girls, were it not for the 
occasional quiver of the lip, the quick, nervous 
gesture, the moistened eye, and faltering tone. 
She left school with disease lurking in her system, 
slowly and surely undermining the citadel of life ; 
but she kept up her courage. She had no idea 
of dying till her hour should come, and, as long 
as she should live, she determined that her liv- 
ing sliould bring forth fruit. She earned money 
enough to transport herself to a climate which was 
pronounced favorable to her health ; there, in wild 
backwoods, among a rough people, who had forgot- 
ten, if they ever knew, the common refinements 
of life, she opened a school. From her rude home 
she wrote merry letters, describing her adventures 



198 COUNTRY LIVING. 

and her circumstances. There was no talk of self- 
denial, the greatness of sacrifice, the hardship of 
missionary life. Over all the harsh outline, and 
the harsher filling in, she threw the veil of her 
playful fancy, and few heard the mournful under- 
tone that thrilled through the gay, sprightly song. 
The new scenes and the softer air did not have the 
desired effect, and a short time since she wrote to 
a friend : " I have moved from a small, quiet 
school to a large, rollicking, frolicking, fun-loving 
one. I am happy ; I think I ought to be. Every 
one is kind. But I am quite puzzled. I don't 
know just what to do. If I am to teach much 
longer, it would be better for me to return to 
New England, and go to school awhile. I have 
earned enough to keep me at school a year or so, 
and I do believe I am willing to exert myself to 
the utmost to improve. But, then, this cough 
increases. It may not be long before it will have 
an end. If I go to New England, I may spend 
all the life left me in acquiring knowledge, and so 
lose the opportunity for usefulness that I might 
have if I remained here. Now the question is, 
Wliich will bring the largest pile of wood, — the 
dull axe for six hours, or the sharp one for 
two?" 

This is what I mean by heroism. This young 
girl standing at bay, watching what she believes 
to be the approach of inevitable death, asking for 
no rest from toil, no indulgence for weakness and 



MEN AND WOMEN. 199 

weariness, no sympathy in loneliness, but only 
striving to know how the little life that remains 
may be turned to the best account. Brave heart ! 
on the wings of this soft south-wind, that munnurs 
of violets in the ear of winter, I send you greeting. 
In your far-off home my voice may never reach 
you ; but if by any chance your eyes should fall 
upon these words, know that my soul does will- 
ing homage to yours, and forgive these few sen- 
tences, for the love and reverence that prompted 
them. 

" None but thou and I shall know." 

I remember another, a stranger in a strange 
land ; an exile from the home of her fathers ; a 
fair-haired and blue-eyed girl, a warm-hearted and 
whole-souled woman ; of exquisite sensibility, re- 
fined taste, and elegant culture ; a lover of song 
and grace and beauty in any guise ; a man in 
strength, a martyr in endurance ; performing a 
father's duty to children not her own ; fighting 
the battle single-handed, and no holiday contest, 
but a life-and-death struo;crle with the wolf at the 
door ; welcoming the cold embrace of Duty as 
smilingly as if it were the warm clasp of Love ; 
eager eyes and ears wide open to the green fields, 
the upspringing daisies, the note of bee and bird, 
yet swerving not a hair's breadth from the rocky 
path which her aching feet most resolutely tread ; 
and where I see her footprints, I know it is holy 
ground. 



200 COUNTRY LIVING. 

And yet another face shines on me through the 
night, — a face over which the Angel of Sorrow 
has swept his wing in passing, and saddened into 
a beauty that is not of the earth. You, look- 
ing, see only dark eyes that flash laughter, love, or 
tears ; a delicate cheek, that pales and flushes at 
your words ; red lips, whence drop rare gems of 
wit and wisdom. These are there, and I see them ; 
but beyond these, and deeper than these, I see 
a soul that has been weighed in the balance and 
not found wanting ; a heart that has been wrung 
by sorest anguish, and only grown more pitying 
and tender; a hand that has touched every note 
from highest to lowest, and learned to strike from 
earthly chords most heavenly harmonies ; a wo- 
man who has said to wealth and station and ease, 
" Get thee behind me ! " and, mailed in her own 
integrity, has dared opposing fate. It is these, 
and such as these, that 

" show us how divine a thing 
A woman may be made." 

They redeem their sex from the charge of frivol- 
ity, inanity, and feebleness, revealing to us the 
capacities that lie hidden in her heart of hearts ; 
and it is because I have witnessed such noble liv- 
ing, such " extraordinary, generous seeking," that 
I believe in woman ; and when I see life going to 
waste, — when I see a woman's soul bent on ig- 
noble ends, frittered away on trifling toys, finding 
content and happiness in things that perish with 



MEN AND WOMEN. 201 

the using, — I feel, not contempt, not anger, but 
sadness and sore regret : — 

" The pity of it, lago, the pity of it." 

I mourn for gold grown dim, and fine gold changed, 
— for fields white to harvest, and the reapers dis- 
porting among flowers, — for a world lying in 
ignorance and wickedness, and the power that 
should raise and redeem it, and fit it once more 
for the footsteps of its Lord, spending its strength 
for naught. 

O, if this latent power could be aroused ! If 
woman would shake off this slumber, and put on 
her strength, her beautiful garments, how would 
she go forth conquering and to conquer, — how 
would the mountains break forth into singing, and 
the trees of the field clap their hands, — how would 
our sin-stained earth arise and shine, her light be- 
ing come, and the glory of the Lord being risen 
upon her ! 

One cannot do the world's work ; but one can 
do one's work. You may not be able to turn the 
world from iniquity, but you can at least keep the 
dust and rust from gathering on your own soul. 
If you cannot be directly and actively engaged in 
fighting the battle, you can at least polish your 
armor and sharpen your weapons, to strike an 
effective blow when the hour comes. You can 
stanch the blood of him who has been wounded in 
the fray, — bear a cup of cold water to the thirsty 

9* 



202 COUNTRY LIVING. 

and fainting, — give help to tlie conquered and 
smiles to the victor. You can rather from the 
past and the present stores of wisdom, so that, 
when the future demands it, you may bring forth 
from your treasures things new and old. What- 
ever of bliss the Divinity that shapes our ends 
may see fit to withhold from you, you are but 
very little lower than the angels so long as you 
have the 

" Godlike power to do, — the godlike aim to know." 

You can be forming habits of self-reliance, sound 
judgment, perseverance, and endurance, which 
may one day stand you in good stead. You can 
so train yourself to right thinking and right acting, 
that uprightness shall be your nature, truth your 
impulse. His head is seldom far wrong whose 
heart is always right. We bow down to mental 
greatness, intellectual strength, and they are Di- 
vine gifts ; but moral rectitude is stronger than 
they. It is irresistible, — always in the end trium- 
phant. There is in goodness a penetrative power 
that nothing can withstand. Cunnincp and malice 
melt away before its mild, open, steady glance. 
Not alone on the fields where chivaliy charges for 
laurels, with helmet and breastplate and lance in 
rest, can the true knight exultantly exclaim, 

" My strength is as the strength often, 
Because my heart is pure," 

but wherever man meets man, wherever there is 



MEN AND WOMEN. 203 

a prize to be won, a goal to be reached. Wealth 
and rank and beauty may form a brilhant setting to 
the diamond, but they only expose more nakedly 
the false glare of the paste. Only when the king's 
daughter is all glorious within, is it fitting and 
proper that her clothing should be of wrought 
gold. 

From the great and the good of all ages rings 
out the same monotone. The high-priest of na- 
ture, the calm-eyed poet who laid his heart so 
close to hers that they seemed to throb in one 
pulsation, yet whose ear was always open to the 
" still sad music of humanity," has given us the 
fruit of his life-lono; wisdom in these grand 
words : — 

" True happiness abides with him alone 
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought, 
Can still respect and still revere himself." 

Through the din of twenty rolling centuries 
pierces the sharp, stern voice of the brave old 
Greek : " Let every man, when he is about to \ 
do a wicked action, above all things in the world ' 
stand in awe of himself, and dread the witness 
within him." All greatness and all glory, all that 
earth has to give, all that heaven can proifer, lies 
within the reach of the lowliest as well as the 
highest ; for He who spake as never man spake 
has said that the very " kingdom of God is within 
you." 

Born to such an inheritance, will you wantonly 



204 COUNTRY LIVING. 

cast it away ? With such a goal in prospect, will 
you suffer yourself to be turned aside by the 
sheen and shimmer of tinsel fruit? With earth 
in possession and heaven in reversion, will you 
go sorrowing and downcast, because here and there 
a pearl or ruby fails you ? Nay, rather, forget- 
ting those things which are behind, and reaching 
forth unto those which are before, press forward. 
Discontent and murmuring are insidious foes ; 
trample them under your feet. Utter no com- 
plaint, whatever betide ; for complaining is a sign 
of weakness. If your trouble can be helped, help 
it ; if not, bear it. You can be whatever you 
will to be. Therefore, form and accomplish worthy 
purposes. If you walk alone, let it be with no 
faltering tread. Show to an incredulous world 

" How grand may be Life's might, 
Without Love's circling crown." 

Or if the golden thread of love shine athwart the 
dusky warp of duty, if other hearts depend on 
yours for sustenance and strength, give to them 
from your fulness no stinted measure. Let the 
dew of your kindness fall on the evil and the good, 
on the just and on the unjust. 

Compass happiness, since happiness alone is 
victory. On the fragments of your shattered plans 
and hopes and love, on the heaped-up ruins of 
your past, rear a stately palace, whose top shall 
reach unto heaven, whose beauty shall gladden 



MEN AND WOMEN. 



205 



the eyes of all beholders, whose doors shall stand 
wide open to receive the wayworn and weary. 
Life is a burden, but it is imposed by God. 
What you make of it, it will be to you, 
whether a millstone about your neck, 
or a diadem upon your brow. 
Take it up bravely, bear 
it on joyfully, lay 
it down trium- 
phantly. 






My Birds. 




TRICTLY speaking, I haven't any, — 
only an old cage thrust away up gar- 
ret under the eaves, — nor, in fact, do 
I want any. Do not, however, for a 
moment suppose that I indulge in a sentimental 
compassion for caged birds, for I don't. I con- 
sider such a thing entirely uncalled for, and mis- 
placed. I have no doubt that a canary-bird, with 
a cup of seed and a glass of water, finds every 
aspiration of his soul satisfied. A sorrow's crown 
of sorrow is remembering happier things. He 
was born and bred in a cage, and, so far from 
being discontented with a restraint of which he is 
not conscious, freedom would bewilder him and 
bring him to grief. But, though I do not take 
into account the bird's feelings, I do mind my 
own ; and a prisoned bird always gives me a 
cramped, asthmatic sensation, if I know what 
cramp and asthma are, which I don't. 

My birds, the birds that furnish my right to 
that possessive pronoun, are the little darlings 



MY BIRDS. 207 

which this moment brighten the cold, damp, 
clammy spring earth with their flutter and chirp 
and song, — little, happy-hearted, hollow-boned 
braves, who dare untimely frosts, and the whirl- 
ing snow-wreaths which winter, forced to leave, 
flings spitefully behind him, — daring the long, 
cold, dismal rains which chill to the heart this 
sweet May month, — merry messengers of the 
storm-king, bearing the olive-leaf of peace ; twit- 
tering prophecies of summer ; tender little bars 
struck off from the music of the spheres ; famt, 
sweet echoes, in their wooing and winning, their 
prudence and painstaking, their tender protec- 
tion and assiduous provision, of the strong, care- 
ful, passionate, loving humanity that swells and 
surges beneath them. 

I love birds ; " I do not mind if it is nothing 
but a hawk or a crow, or a sooty little chimney- 
swallow. I even like chickens till they become 
hens and human. I cannot look with indifference 
upon turkeys standing out forlorn in the rain, 
too senseless to think of going in for shelter, and 
so taking it helplessly, with rounded backs, droop- 
ing heads, dripping feathers, and long, bare, red, 
miserable legs, quite too wretched to be ridicu- 
lous. I dote on goslings, — little soft, yellow, 
downy, awkward things, waddling around with 
the utmost self-complacency, landing on their 
backs every third step, and kicking spasmodi- 
cally till they are set right side up with care, 



208 COUNTRY LIVING. 

when they resume their waddle and their self- 
complacency as if nothing in the woi'ld had 
happened. The only fault one can find with 
them is, that they will grow up ; and goslings 
grown up are nothing but geese, with their 
naivete degenerated into stupidity, their awk- 
wardness crystallized into vulgarity, and their 
tempers unspeakably bad. But the little birds 
that sing to me from the apple-trees, and hop 
about on the sunny southern slope, are not of 
these. Purer blood runs through finer veins. 
Golden robins, a fiery flash of splendor, gleam in 
the long grass, and put the dandelions to shame. 
There are magnificent bluebirds, with their pale, 
unwinking intensity of color; and homely little 
redbreasts, which we all called robins when we 
were young, and invested with the sanctity of 
that sweet, ancestral pity which has given them a 
name in our memory and a place in our hearts, till 
somebody must needs flare up, and proclaim that 
they are nothing but thrushes ! As if this world 
were in a general way such an Elysium that peo- 
ple can afford to make themselves unnecessarily 
disagreeable. If there is any one thing more 
than another that is an unmitigated abomination 
aod bore, it is those persons who are always set- 
ting you right ; who find their delight in prick- 
ing your little silk balloons of illusion with their 
detestable pins of facts ; who are always bringing 
their statistics to bear upon your enthusiasms ; 



MY BIRDS. 209 

■who go around with a yardstick and a quart- 
measure to give you the cubic contents of your 
rapture, demonstrating to a logical certainty that 
you need not have been rapt at all ; pro\nng by 
the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of 
Euclid that spirits disembodied cannot have any 
influence upon spirits embodied ; setting up that 
there is n't any Maelstrom and never was, — that 
the Aurora Borealis is a common cloud reflecting 
the sunlight, and turning the terrible ocean- 
waves that ran mountain-high when you were a 
child into pitiful horse-pond shivers, never mount- 
ing above the tens. For my part, I don't be- 
lieve a word of it. (I believe the equatorial line 
cuts through Africa like a darning-needle, that 
the Atlantic waves would drown the Himalayas 
if they could get at them, that eclipses are caused 
by the beast which Orion is hunting trying to 
gulp down the moon, and I should not wonder 
if the earth w^as supported on the back of a great 
turtle, wdiicli hypothesis has at least the advan- 
tage of explaining satisfactorily why it is that we 
all travel heavenward at such a snail's pace, and 
founds in a sympathetic and involuntary attrac- 
tion the aldermanic weakness for turtle-soup. 
When one has been born and brought up in an 
innocent belief, one does not like to have it dis- 
turbed on slight grounds ; and people who have 
an insane proclivity to propagandism would do 
well to go to heathendom, where they will find 



210 COUNTRY LIVING. 

ample room and verge enough in overthrowing 
mischievous opinions. But no punishment is too 
severe for him who roots up a thrill, and plants in 
its place only a fact. Suppose it is a fact, what 
then ? Facts are not necessarily truth. Facts 
ai'e often local, incidental, deceptive. But a thrill 
is the quiver of the boundless, fathomless life that 
underlies humanity, — a sign and a symbol of 
tliat infinite from which we sprang, and towards 
which, perforce, we tend. Come then, my robin 
redbreast ! Never shall my hand rise sacrilegious 
to wrest from you heraldic honors. Always 
shall you w^ear an aureole of that golden light 
that glimmers down the ages, the one bright spot 
in a dark and deathful wood. Always shall you 
sing to me angels' songs, of peace on earth, good- 
will to men. 

So they hop through the May mornings' shade 
and sun, robins, and bluebirds, and dingy little 
sparrows as thick as blackberries, at once wild and 
tame, familiar yet shy, tripping, fluttering, snatch- 
ing their tiny breakfasts, cocking their saucy heads 
as if listening to some far-off strain, then, moved 
by a sudden impulse, hopping along again in a 
fork-lightning kind of way, and again coming to 
a capricious full stop and silence, with momentary 
interludes of short, quick, silvery jerks of head 
and tail. And, as they sit and sing, — as I watch 
their ceaseless busyness, their social twittering, 
their energetic, heart-whole melody, their sudden 



MY BIRDS. 211 

flights, tlieir graceful SAveeps, and agile darts, — 
I recognize the Pauline title-deeds, and, havino- 
notliing, yet possessing all things, I say in deed 
and in truth, "My birds." 

But I came very near having a proprietary right 
in one small family last summer. I discovered a 
ground-sparrow's nest just on the overhanging 
edge of the cornfield. There were three little 
eggs in it, gray and mottled, and not very pretty. 
But eggs forerun birds, so I visited it regularly 
every day to take observations. All the corn- 
people were sworn not to disturb it. A stick was 
set up to beacon-mark the plough away in case 
of momentary forgetfulness ; and, notwithstanding 
all this care and caution, that selfish, cowardly 
old mother-bird took a panic, shattered my hopes, 
and went away leaving her helpless egglets to 
their fate. Their fate was to have a hole bored 
through them from stem to stern, their embryotic 
souls blown remorselessly through it, and then be 
transported, nest and all, to a what-not in my 
room, where to this very day they stand looking 
seaward, a hollow monument of the heartlessness 
of birds, and of the mournful extent to which 
children are — shall I say it? — humbugged by 
their judicious parents. When we were young, 
were we not all exhorted to be very pitiful and 
of tender mercy to the birds ? Was it not rep- 
resented to be the height of cruelty to plunder 
their nests ? Were not pathetic changes rung on 



212 COUNTRY LIVING. 

the depth and strength of their domestic affection ? 
And will anybody tell me, then, why this unnat- 
ural sparrow deserted her home, that was not even 
threatened ? Domestic affection ! I have no doubt 
the story was originally trumped up to keep us 
from tearing our clothes by climbing the trees. I 
have come to the conclusion that, though birds 
may take on airs of tenderness, it is all a dainty 
acting. They have no rights which mankind is 
bound to respect, and I hereby give public notice 
that I intend for the future to rob every bird's-nest 
that I can lay my hands on. 

I came still nearer to owning birds in the winter. 
A pair of doves — pigeons, some people call them, 
with perverted taste, but pigeon has no character. 
It is a generic name, without history or associa- 
tions. It savors of iiunnino; aiid game, and noth- 
ing else. Dove is the word, bubbling up and 
boiling over with the sweetness of honeymoons. 
So it was not pigeons, but a pair of brown doves, 
that began to make nervous raids upon our back- 
yard when the frosts began to whiten and blacken. 
They were old acquaintances of mine. Their 
summer residence had been under the roof of a 
barn a few yards ofiP, and I had watched the 
process of their courtship with great interest. It 
had not run smooth at all. A little dove-cot had 
been constructed under the eaves, with a doorway 
and platform outside for the accommodation of 
any solitary who might desire to be set in families. 



MY BIRDS. 213 

and I was startled one morning by a succession of 
strange, angry, guttural sounds proceeding from 
tlie barn. I went out. A lively scene was enact- 
ing upon the platform under the ernes. There 
sat a lady-bird in the doorway, and there were 
her two suitors before her, putting each other into a 
terrible passion. Number One held possession of 
the platform, and Number Two was making frantic 
efforts to carry it by assault. Number One strutted 
back and forth, ruffling his feathers, dilating his 
throat, and swearing frightfully in dove dialect. 
Number Two was calmer, but persistent and deter- 
mined. He attacked in front and flank and rear. 
He made desperate dashes from above. Where- 
ever Number Two planted his adventurous foot, 
thither Number One betook himself in great force, 
and ousted him. If Number Two stole a march, 
and sidled up to my lady. Number One made a 
sortie and shoved him oft". There was no rest for 
the sole of his foot but the ridge-pole of the neigh- 
boring corn-barn, where he occasionally alighted 
to take breath. Evidently both were very plucky, 
very much in love, quite conscious that they were 
fighting under the eye of their mistress, and equally 
determined never to give up the ship. She, most 
gracious lady, all this while preserved an imper- 
turbable and thorough-bred indifference. I have 
no doubt she saw every ebb and flow of the con- 
test, and probably had her own preferences about 
the victory, but her fiice said nothing of it. Some- 



214 COUNTRY LIVING. 

times she sat immovable, looking far out into the 
intense inane, as if on sublimer thoughts intent. 
Sometimes she would rise, arch and coquettish, 
jauntily shalfe out her plumage, and trip lightly 
to and fro, displaying her fine face and figure in 
the most -bewilderingly charming attitudes. This 
was a sure signal for her belligerent lovers to fall 
to with renewed and indescribable rancor. Some- 
times she gave herself up to a fascinating languor. 
The silken lids would creep slowly and softly over 
her brilliant eyes, as if weariness at the prolonga- 
tion of a strug-ole in which she was so little in- 
terested had positively overpowered her. Long 
time in even scale the battle hung. But posses- 
sion is nine points of the law of might, as well as 
of right. Number One fought under the im- 
mense advantage of being on the spot, and able 
to rest directly after one round, and come fresh 
to the next, while Number Two had to make long 
journeys between each, with nothing to stand on 
when he got there. Fighting on a firm footing 
is nothing, but fighting on nothing is a good deal ; 
and Number Two was at length forced to desist, 
leaving the fair one and her successful admirer to 
devote themselves to the pursuits of peace. 

Which they did with such assiduity that for 
many weeks they were scarcely visible to the 
naked eye ; but if Fate led any to the vicinity of 
the barn scaffold, they became at once conscious 
of a mysterious stir and bustle and flutter, a cer- 



MY BIRDS. 215 

tain sign that something was happening. When 
tlie tidness of time was come, the sometliing turned 
out, or ratlier chipped out, to be two httle brown 
doves, the very image of their respected parents. 
These respected parents it was who, impelled by 
the 7'es angustce domi, came foraging in our back- 
yard. I determined to befriend them, to attach 
them to me as far as possible. They surely needed 
friendship and attachment if they were to stand 
the long, cold Northern winter that was setting 
in, and I was very sure that I should be extremely 
glad of some little life to keep the genial current of 
my own soul from freezing. So I made advances 
by scattering a few kernels of corn on the porch- 
roof under my chamber window. They mounted 
the shed-roof and eyed it longingly. I mounted 
the window-seat and eyed them. They wished 
they dared, but they did n't. They were evi- 
dently suspicious of masked batteries and infer- 
nal machines. Then I hid behind the curtain. 
They stepped nearer. No appearance of hostility. 
Nearer still. All quiet along the Potomac. A 
twitching of wings, a stretching of neck, a set- 
tling of body for about five minutes, and down 
they came to the outmost verge of the porch, 
balancing themselves on the wire edge just one 
second, and immediately flying back, alarmed at 
their own temerity. But though retreating so 
precipitately, that one onset had given them assur- 
ance, and they soon returned, stejoping daintily 



216 COUNTRY LI VI NG. 

and gingerly along, with many starts and tremors, 
to where the corn lay. Then they became ridicu- 
lous. They would shoot at a kernel, and rush 
back alarmed at the noise which their beaks made 
against the tin roofing. The least breath of 
wind, the buzzing of a fly, startled them. They 
gobbled up the corn in a perfect hysteric of hurry, 
darting about twenty times at a single kernel be- 
fore they could get possession of it. I don't think 
they were very skilful at best, — I am sure I 
could hit better than that if I were a dove ; but 
they were in great trepidation of mind, and that 
is not favorable to accuracy of aim. After a 
few days they became reassured, and demon- 
strated their confidence by bringing their young 
and interesting family along with them. Their 
family, it must be confessed, were not difficult to 
bring ; they evinced not the slightest backward- 
ness. They entered into the spirit of it at once. 
They acknowledged the corn with the most self- 
possessing alacrity. I fed them regularly twice a 
day, filching their meals from the garret without 
remorse. The corn had no business to be there in 
the first place, tolling all the mice in the neighbor- 
hood ; and I reasoned that there was no cause 
why scores of mice should overflow with milk and 
honey, and a brood of doves die of starvation. So 
they did not, and so daily we established more 
amicable and more intimate relations. Re^ularlv 
every morning, at about eight o'clock, the swooj) 



31 Y BIRDS. 217 

of their white wings cleft the frosty air, click, 
click, click, went their horny little toes over the 
tin plating, and in a moment their little round 
eyes wei'e peering in through the window as they 
perched upon the sill outside. (I trust there is 
no truth in the doctrine of the transmigration of 
souls !} I believe they formed and cherished for 
me a real affection, — something quite beyond the 
loaf-and-fishy attachment of the general animal 
race, — something, in short, sentimental and super- 
dovian ; for, after they had been abundantly fed, 
they still sat on the window-sill from morning till 
late in the afternoon. Through driving sleet and 
snow, or wrapped in the winter sunshine, they 
held their post, occasionally hopping down upon 
the roof to get the kinks out of their legs, but re- 
turning soon to take up their old position. When 
I spoke to them, they would tiutter, and wink, 
and snap their eyes, and look mightily pleased. If 
I sat by the other window, round they swept to 
that, nodding and cooing a " Here we are ! " 

But one morning — woe worth the day ! — I 
heard a noise overhead, a wild, violent, muffled, 
murderous noise of struggle and assault, and sud- 
denly down past my window floated a tiny cloud 
of white, fleecy feathers, — dripped three drops of 
blood. I started up, suspicious at once of crime 
and the cat. The cat's name is Moses, — a treach- 
erous fellow, striking you when you caress him ; 
a totally depraved cat by nature, choosing evil 

10 



218 COUNTRY LIVING. 

when the good is not only better, but sweeter ; 
turnmg away from his allotted food to steal what- 
ever he can lay his paws and claws on ; a quar- 
relsome fellow, and cowardly withal, attacking 
where he is sure of success, and yowling fright- 
fully where he is not. (IBut he is a good mouser, 
and you manage about cats as you do about con- 
gressmen, generals, and other public officers. If 
they will do the work you want done, and do it 
well, you have to take them, though they may 
abuse their wives, tell lies, and be otherwise abomi- 
nable. You execrate their moral character, but 
you need their special ability, and you use it, not 
indorsing them thereby r) So we tolerated our cat, 
because he would not tolerate mice, though as a 
cat and a oentleman he could never be introduced 
into good society. The garret was his peculiar 
haunt. There lay the golden corn in forty-thievic 
profusion. Thither came the mice to levy black- 
mail for themselves and their little ones, and there 
I feared my tender dove, lured by the tempting 
repast, might have flown through the open window 
and met his fate. I rushed up garret. On the 
floor by the window lay a clawful of white, fleecy 
feathers, clotted with blood. Yes, it must be, but 
where was the murderer? I called to Moses. 
The echoes alone called back from the rafters. I 
walked up and down, peering behind the boxes 
and the barrels. No Moses, no dove. Marvel- 
ling at the mystery, I turned to go, and encoun- 



MY BIRDS. 219 

tered tlic gleam of two green, phosphorescent eyes, 
slarino; at me through the darkness under an old 
bed in the corner. I went near, and lifted the 
corner of the quilt. There lay the mother dove 
on her back, her beautiful white and brown feath- 
ers dabbled with blood, her stiff, pathetic legs 
stretched upwards and outwards, her bright eyes 
closed, her fond heart still. Over her stood the 
fiend Moses, burning his fierce, fiery eyes into my 
soul ; and as I tarried there, bending to behold, 
with my two hands resting on my two knees, pity- 
ing the dove and confounding the cat, a snip of the- 
ology came into my mind. Let not envy or bigotry 
interpose a scornful smile. If the great magician 
of literature could see tongues in the trees, books 
in the running brooks, and sermons in stones, may 
not I, who am indeed no magician, but a humble 
little page, read theology in a .cat's eyes ? 

I desire to say preliminarily that I am a Calvin- 
ist. I say it because the Atlantic Monthly has 
been in sundry quarters suspected of a certain lean- 
ing the other way, and I may be suspected of lean- 
ing with it out of an ignoble subserviency. Not 
that what I am about to say does at all deviate 
from the right line of Orthodoxy ; but " liberal 
Christians" have a way of exercising their liberal- 
ity to an astonishing extent on themselves. When- 
ever I give out anything unusually brilliant in the 
line of ethics or theology, up jumps a Unitarian, 
and exclaims, " That is Unitarianism." Whatso- 



220 COUNTRY LIVING. 

ever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, 
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are 
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever 
things are of good report, if there be any virtue, 
and if there be any praise, — all the grist goes to 
their mill. But what right have they, I should 
like to know, to monopolize just thinking and wise 
uttering? Is there nothing sensible, philosophic, 
natural, judicious, catholic, in Orthodoxy? Does 
every good gift and every perfect gift come from 
the Gospel according to Channing, and no good 
thing at all out of Emmons ? Do not the " Evan- 
gelical " sometimes drop their lines into the great 
ocean of truth and get a nibble ? and is it gen- 
erous or liberal for the un-Evangelical to snatch 
at it? Truth belongs to him who recognizes it. 
There may be certain points not held in common, 
but they are few when compared to the myriads 
which are the inheritance of humanity, and which 
bind men together in golden bands of brotherhood. 
In this rich, unfenced land, one may make perpetual 
forays, and draw off laden with spoil, yet trench on 
no man's rights, appropriate no man's possessions. 

I must confess that the Orthodox are only too 
ready to play into their opponents' hands. When 
the latter take me up, the former drop me in- 
stantly. Instead of tightening their hold, and say- 
ing to their antagonists, " No, you don't ! Anti- 
christ is not going to pre-empt all the sense and 
sparkle there is in the world. We have right and 



MV BIRDS. 221 

title to this, and we mean to defend it against all 
comers. Go and raise yonr own prodigies. We 
want ours, for home consumption," — they take 
the Unitarians' word for it, and give me over as a 
repi'obate mind concerning the faith. They have 
such a heresy-phobia, that heretics have only to 
raise the cry, " Mad dog ! " and out they tumble 
with broom-stick and shillalah to hunt me down, 
never stopping to inquire whether I am only 
labelled mad, or whether I do indeed foam at the 
mouth. 

What 's in a name. Miss Capulet ? Everything, 
my dear. 

But for all this, I am not to be lured or fisti- 
cuffed away from the faith of my fathers. A Cal- 
vinist I was born, and a Calvinist I remain. It 
does occur to me sometimes that I should like to 
know what Calvinism is ; but that is not essential. 
Whatever it is, I believe in it. I accept its points, 
all five of them ; and if there were five thousand of 
them I should accept them just the same. Origi- 
nal sin, total depravity, natural ability, — noth- 
ing is too hard for me. I follow wherever Calvin 
leads. If he could stand it, I can. Servetus does 
not stagger me. I could swallow a good deal 
larger camel than he is, and not make faces. I 
don't believe, in the first place, that Calvin burned 
Servetus, and if he did, I dare say Servetus richly 
deserved it. Why could he not keep still ? Why 
must he needs jump from the hot water of Tou- 



222 COUNTRY LIVING. 

louse into the frying-pan of Basle and the fire 
of Geneva ? Why could he not content himself 
with being a doctor and killing other people, in- 
stead of turning theologian and killing himself? 
It is just these very wiliul, pushing, impracticable, 
one-idea men that make the mischief. If people 
would only eat their dinners and let things alone, 
there would be no trouble. But every age and 
country has its pestilent fellows, who are never 
easy unless they are poking into somebody's pet 
belief, or custom, or prejudice, and turning the 
world upside down. Only the nineteenth century 
has grown squeamish about cauterizing for disease, 
and so lets it run till the whole head is sick and 
the whole heart faint. Our own country furnishes 
a melancholy example of this. If Hopkins and 
Phillips and Beecher, and two or three hundred 
more, could have been summarily Servetized, our 
friends would not now be up to their necks in 
Southern mud, and slaveholders would be crack- 
ing their whips in peace over the heads of their 
negroes, and our own. Moreover, whatever Ser- 
vetus's opinions deserved, his manners certainly 
merited the stake ; and I wish there could be a 
law passed to-morrow, that everybody who does 
not try to make himself agreeable, everybody who 
is arrogant, or supercilious, or sneering, or biting, 
or in any way gratuitously uncomfortable, should 
be toasted on a gridiron like St. Lawrence, without 
even the privilege of turning the other side to the 



MY BIRDS. 223 

fire, until he promises to mend liis ways. For my 
part, I believe I would about as soon be burnt at 
the stake — I know I would rather be consider- 
ably scorched — as come in contact with those tre- 
mendous people that one sees occasionally walk- 
ing up and down the earth, seeking whom they 
may devour. 

If I have now stated my position, and made it 
sufficiently clear that I do not design to conceal or 
assume any views out of deference to any institu- 
tion, I Avill return to my muttons, as the French 
say. 

It chanced to me once to overhear a company 
of theologians talking. They were discussing re- 
sponsibility, penalty, and things of that ilk, and, as 
far as an uninitiated person could gather, the gist 
of it was whether babies sinned before they began, 
or not till afterwards. The thing which they all 
evidently agreed upon . was, that beings did not 
have moral responsibility till they had moral ideas, 
— that is, till they knew right from wrong. This, 
I am sure, all must agree to. But as I stood 
steadfastly gazing at that cat, I went a step be- 
yond, and I remembered a little girl whose educa- 
tion had advanced to the degree that she could 
make feint of articulating single words, but was in 
no wise equal to the effort of stringing two words 
together. This tiny maiden, tempted of the Devil, 
and aided and abetted thereby, had feloniously 
abstracted a lump of sugar from the sugar-firkin, 



224 COUNTRY LIVING. 

and retired behind the closet-door to enjoy her 
prize. There she was overtaken in her iniquity. 
Her eyes looked up to see her mother's eyes fixed 
on hers ; and whoever saw the shame and guilt 
and remorse that settled in those eyes, and spread 
over that three-cent-piece of a face, — whoever, 
indeed, saw the tiny figure smuggled behind the 
door, or felt the unwonted silence occasioned by 
her temporary withdrawal from the world, — could 
have had no doubt that she knew in the half-inch 
depths of her frail little heart that she was doing 
wrong. Yet how far was she morally respon- 
sible ? If she had died that moment, would she not 
have gone straight up to the arms of the Christ ? 
I verily believe so. And looking into the eyes of 
Moses, my belief found confirmation there ; for 
Moses exhibited just as unmistakable signs of 
moral ideas as did Metty. Both took what they 
knew they had no right to take. Metty's mamma 
called to her, and Metty did not reply, though 
usually both feet and tongue were swift to meet 
that voice. I called "Moses ! " and silence was 
my only response, though he generally leaped with 
great strides to the stairs the moment the garret 
door was opened. Metty took her sugar behind 
the door to eat it. Moses took his bird under the 
bed. Metty spoke no word of justification. No 
more did Moses. The fact I believe to be, that 
one was just about as morally responsible as the 
other ; only a human soul is grafted on, and will 



MY BIRDS. 225 

bud and blossom from the little girl's animtil in- 
stincts, and the poor old cat will grope along for- 
ever throu£[h his blind brute life. 

But he shall not have my dove to sustain him 
in it, I said. He shall not crown his grievous 
transgression with festive orgies. He shall at 
least suifer the torture of seeing the prize 
snatched from him in the moment of victory. 
I went to the head of the stairs and gave a 
general call for assistance. Dr. Sangrado came. 
Dr. Sangrado said at, once that he should pick 
the dove and have her cooked. I turned away 
in disgust without opening my lips. Moses's 
arrangement was but ferocity. Dr. Sangrado's 
was cannibalism. He did pick her, and brought 
me the wings, — two sj^otless, appealing white 
wino-s. One is laid away, the other is tied with 
a pink satin ribbon and hangs under my mantel- 
piece. If you should mistake it for an ordinary, 
household wing, and should begin to sweep up 
the hearth with it, you Avould experience a sud- 
den difficulty of respiration. This wing is only 
a memento. Occasionally, I apply it to such 
aesthetic uses as brushing a silk cushion or a 
velvet cover, but never to any profaner purposes. 

The next morning I was rejoiced to hear that 
Dr. Sangrado, having prepared his victim for the 
vile obsequies which he designed, had hung her 
in the cellar, and Moses, prowling around as 
usual in search of prey, had got at the bird and 
10* o 



226 COUNTRY LIVING. 

fared sumptuosly. As concerning Moses against 
the dove, I was implacable ; but as concerning 
Dr. Sangrado against Moses, I took sides with 
the latter. So, though I would have preferred 
decent interment for my pet, I yet felt that the 
worst had been spared; the king had come to his 
own again, and I was content. 

For one day the widower dove looked bewil- 
dered. Then he disappeared for three days. 
Then he returned jubilant with the handsomest 
dark slate-colored mate it is possible to conceive. 
Her feathers gleamed and glistened in the sun, 
flashing through green and purple and pink, daz- 
zling and magnificent. Then I saw exemplified 
the truth of the old adage : 

" A mother 's a mother all the days of her life; 
A father 's a father till he gets him a new wife." 

The two young doves immediately began to suffer 
an unrelenting persecution, not from their step- 
mother, but from their father, though I dare say 
she privately egged him on. He determined to 
drive them away. He chased them all around 
the edge of the roof. He pecked at them fu- 
riously when they came for food as aforetime. 
He would not suffer them to take a single grain 
of corn in peace, while the Black Princess settled 
on her lees and waxed fat. His unnatural treat- 
ment at length effected the desired object. His 
persecuted offspring took leave of him forever, the 
tawny bride reigned triumphant, and he basked 



MY BIRDS. 227 

in the sunsliine of unclouded prosperity. But his 
dehght Avas sliort-lived. Swift justice overtook 
liini. His beautiful brunette assumed a sudden 
pique and freak, and repulsed him severely. Be- 
fore he had recovered from the shock of aston- 
ishment, she turned his discomfiture into annihi- 
lation by introducing a new actor to the scene, — 
a handsome stranger, snow-white and resplendent. 
Both set themselves remorselessly to work against 
the head of the flimily. The chalice which he 
had forced upon his innocent offspring was com- 
mended to his own lips. He tasted to the full the 
bitterness of being shoved and pecked and out- 
raged in his own home, till he fled, a broken- 
hearted bird, from his violated hearth. I should 
have pitied him if his previous ill-behavior had 
not alienated from him the sympathy of all vir- 
tuous people. As it was, I confess to a grim sat- 
isfaction in the cruel chagrin which must have 
torn his bosom as he sat on the ridge-pole of the 
barn, contemplating the ruin of his domestic hap- 
piness, while his faithless bride and her new com- 
panion made love to each other on my window- 
sill in full view. And it is surprising to see how 
much love birds can make when they set about 
it. They actually kissed/ I should not suppose 
there could be much pleasure in it. Two ten- 
penny nails might as well attempt caresses, but 
they seemed to enjoy it. They ran the sharp 
points of their hard bills over and around each 



228 COUNTRY LIVING. 

other's bills, and bui'ied their noses in each other's 
feathers, and cooed and simpered, as fond and 
silly as you please. Perhaps it is this demon- 
strativeness that has made " dove " a term of en- 
dearment, but I suspect there may be a good deal 
more in that application of it than comes to the 
surface at once. My observations have led me 
to conclude that doves are of a decidedly quarrel- 
some disposition, capable of developing into vira- 
goes, termagants, and downright scolds. Also 
their tenderness, though laid on pretty thick while 
it lasts, very soon gives out. Has not some close 
observer, a little cynical, perhaps, given the word 
its erotic turn as a delicate but sharp satire ? 

Since the spring has come, my doves have flown. 
I neglected to feed them one day, and they left me. 
When I have been from home a week at a time 
they never seemed to mind it, but frequented me 
as usual on my return. I suppose tny oifence lay 
in being at home and not feeding them ; and as 
the mild weather and the resurrection of insect- 
life made it practicable for them to gratify their 
resentment, they concluded to do so. 

I am consoled for their absence by the advent 
of those delicious little beings, those true fairies of 
the air, those tiny marvels of creative power, — 
the protest of tliis new world against the Trans- 
atlantic notion that its grandeur is not exalted by 
a corresponding finish, — humming-birds. A pa- 
per of round, black, microscopic seeds, labelled 



MY BIRDS. 229 

" humming-bird balm," sent me by an honored 
and valued friend, who, amid the stern duties of 
life finds time for its small, sweet courtesies, was 
sown in the fall, rij^ened through the frosts and 
snows, and sprang up with the sirring into green 
and flowery strength. Attracted by some myste- 
rious influence, the little birdlets come flying from 
east and west and north and south. I hear their 
lively chirp in the warm morning. On they dart 
with rapid flight, — their forked tails fluttering, 
their black eyes sparkling, their black bills aiming 
straight ahead, their brown wings deepening into 
royal purple, their glossy backs gleaming out a 
golden-green splendor, their breasts and throats 
now dazzhng me with ruby fire, now throbbing like 
molten gold, changing from intense black to burn- 
ing orange and fiery crimson, the brilliant scales 
instinct with glowing life, — more beautiful than 
tongue can tell. Now he poises himself, a quiver- 
ing, shining mist, above the balm. Now he thrusts 
liis slender tongue into the flower-cup, and rifles 
its hidden honey. And now I see indeed 
the force of Sidney Smith's advice to 
women to give a kiss as a hum- 
ming-bird runs his bill into 
a honey - suckle, — 
deep, but deli- 
cate. 



Tommy. 




^ OMETIMES when I am sitting in my 
room, I hear a prolonged " g-a-a-h ! " 
Then I know that Tommy is out. 
Tommy has escaped from his keepers, 
and is pursuing his investigations in the world at 
large. So I go to the window, and a pink gleam 
flashes up from the grass, and there, sure enough, 
is Tommy, climbing up toward the house Avith 
slow, tottering, uncertain steps, but with a face 
indicative of a desperate resolve to get somewhere, 
and with both arms acting as balancing-poles. 
Then I call out, " jSitMo ! little Tom-wiee.'" and 
everything changes. The arms drop, the feet 
stop, the resolution fades out of his face. He 
looks blankly towards all points of the compass, 
and when finally his eyes alight on me, what a 
smile ! An ordinary curve of his generous, Irish 
lips does n't seem at all adequate to his feelings. 
He smiles latitudinally and longitudinally, — away 
round towards the back of his head, up to his 
nose, and down into his chin. Out goes his right 



•TOMMY. 231 

arm as far as it can stretch, with the fat fore- 
finger extended towards me, and a more intense 
"g-a-a-h!" bursts from the little throat. Then, 
with renewed energy, he resumes his travels. He 
does very well so long as the ascent is gradual, 
but when it becomes abrupt, his troubles begin. 
It is n't the tumbling down, however, that hurts 
him. Like all the rest of us, he can do that very 
easily, but it is the getting up again that plays 
the mischief. He rears himself on his toes and 
fingers, and there he stands, a round-backed little 
quadruped, utterly at a loss what to do next ; 
for Tommy does not yet understand the use of 
his knees. If he thinks I am looking at him, he 
will stand there and squeal till he becomes con- 
vinced that I have gone away and left him to his 
own resources, which I generally do ; when he 
drops, or rolls, or wriggles along, in some illegal 
and unatomical way, and at last stands radiant 
in the porch. Then he steers straightway to the 
side-lio-hts. Those side-liohts are an unfailino; 
source of admiring wonder. If somebody is on 
the opposite side to play bo-peep, he is ecstatic. 
If nobody is there, he is calmly blissful. 

Tommy is a great nuisance during the " fall 
cleaning." He is always getting into the soap- 
suds and hot-water generally. I volunteered once 
to take charge of him. I was going to tack down 
a carpet. Tommy looked on in amazement. Then 
he got down on the floor, and tried to take the 



232 COUNTRY LIVING. 

tacks in his soft fingers. I rapped the soft fingers 
with my carpet-hammer. He gave one yell, and 
drew them back. I kept on with my work. In 
a minute, the soft fingers were creeping in among 
the tacks. Another rap, another yell, another 
creep, — - rap I yell ! creep, — till I grew tired of 
rapping, if he did not of being rapped. I suppose 
I did n't hit quite hard enough, but one does n't 
like to take liberties with other people's babies. 
Then I took hold of him by the back of his frock 
with one hand, carried him, with head and feet 
hanging, to the fiirthest side of the room, and de- 
posited him in a corner. I had hardly driven one 
tack in, before the little rascal was rounding up 
his back again under my very eyes. I gathered 
him up once more, and dumped him in the corner 
as before. Evidently it was fine fun for him. 
Nothing could exceed the alacrity with which he 
crawled over to me. In despair, I at length put 
up the tacks, and proceeded to arrange some cur- 
tain-fixtures. Tommy was suspiciously still for 
several minutes, and when I went to ascertain the 
cause, I found he had got a bucket of sea-sand 
that had been left in the room, had emptied it on 
the carpet, and was flinging it about in royal style. 
I regretted to stop his enjoyment, for I have a 
fondness for sand myself, but it did not seem to 
be appropriate under the circumstances, and I 
scooped it up as well as I could, and put it beyond 
his reach. The next time I looked at him, which 



TOMMY. 233 

was in about a quarter of a minute, he was exert- 
ing himself to the utmost in pushing a large pitcher 
oft' the lower part of the wash-hand-stand. I 
caught it just as it was toppling over the brink, 
and before I could get that out of harm's way, 
he had tumbled a writing-desk out of a chair, scat- 
tering pens, ink, and paper in all directions, I 
saw at once that, if I was going to take care of 
Tommy, I must "give my mind to it." I took 
him into the kitchen, as the place best prepared 
to resist his incursions. He struck a bee-line for 
the stove, and covered himself with crock. I 
could n't undertake to wash him, but I mopped 
him up a little, put on his hat, and took him out 
to Avalk. Everything went on blithely till I 
turned to go home, then he raised the standard 
of rebellion. Tommy seldom cries, but he has a 
gamut of most surprising squeals at his command. 
On the present occasion, he exhibited them in 
Avonderful variety, and with remarkable comiDass 
of sound. I might say every step was a squeal. 
The neighborhood rushed to the windows, not 
unreasonably fearing a repetition of the " babes 
in the wood." I covered his eyes, and swung 
him around rapidly three or four times, to be- 
wilder him so that he should not know which way 
lie was going. But Tommy was too old a bird 
to be caught by such chaff". He pulled backward, 
sidewise, every way but the way he ought to 
have pulled. I sat down on the root of an old 



234 COUNTRY LIVING. 

elm- tree, and gazed at liim in silent despair. He 
smiled back at me serene* as a summer morning, 
but the moment I showed symptoms of starting, 
he showed symptoms of squealing, till at length 
I conquered my compunctions, took him up in 
my arms, crock and all, and carried him home. 

Tommy has a little black kitten, and the un- 
derstandino; between them is wonderful to see. 
Whenever you see Tommy's pink dress, you may 
be sure the kitty's glossy fur is not far oif ; and 
she whisks around him, and tantalizes him in the 
most provoking manner. Sometimes they both 
run a steeple-chase after her tail ; kitty is too wise, 
by far, to let anything so valuable as her tail get 
into the clutch of those undlscriminating fingers ; 
but she frisks and gambols around him delicrht- 
fully, and Tommy turns, too, as fast as he can, 
and does n't know that the flashing tail is never 
to be got hold of by him. It is surprising how 
slowly children develop compared with other ani- 
mals. Tommy's kitten is a good deal younger 
than he, yet she makes nothing of climbing up to 
the ridge-pole of the barn after the doves, which 
she never catches, or scudding up the tall cherry- 
tree and peeping down at Tommy from the upper 
branches. I believe she does it to excite his envy. 
C Tommy is intimate only with the kitten, but he 
makes friends with the chickens, and cultivates the 
acquaintance of the pig by throwing the clothes- 
pins over in his pen. An old rooster, nearly as 



TOMMY. 235 

tall as liimself, seems to have attracted his especial 
ix'i^ard. His efforts to catch him are persistent, 
though as yet unsuccessfuh He evidently has 
perfect faith in his ultimate success, however, 
and every time Rooster heaves in sight. Tommy 
makes a lurch after him with both arms extended. 
Rooster understands perfectly how matters stand, 
and preserves a dignified composure till Tommy 
gets within a foot of him, when he leisurely with- 
draws. Tommy stops a moment, takes a survey, 
and goes at it again.) 

The days, and the weeks, and the months pass 
on, and Tommy's rich Irish blood ripens in the 
summer sunshine. His tottering legs grow firmer. 
His dimpled arms forebode strength. As I sit at 
my window, I see the apple-trees in the orchard 
grow white with bloom, and under them my best 
silk umbrella is marching about, as the courts say, 
without any visible means of support. While I 
gaze in astonishment, it suddenly gives a lurch, 
and reveals Tommy under its capacious dome in a 
seventh heaven of ecstasy. Or I am startled, 
while sitting alone in the warm afternoon, by see- 
ing a blue eye, just a naked, human eye, peering 
in through the lowest chink of a closed blind 
opening on the porch. It turns out to belong 
to Tommy, who, by standing on tiptoe in the 
porch, can jvist get one eye in range. Now I see 
him trotting down the lane alone, (?lad in a gay 
scarlet frock, et p- outer ea nihi^ his fat little legs 



236 COUNTRY LIVING. 

brown with dirt, liis white neck, face, and arms 
mottled with the same, and his curly hair a jungle. 
From his abstracted and eager manner, I infer 
that he is bent on some grave errand. " Where 
going, Tommy ? " I call, suspicious of a secret ex- 
pedition. " 0-gah-gi-bah ! " shouts Tommy, with- 
out slackening his pace. Out comes his mother, 
with a twig, and gives chase. Tommy becomes 
cognizant of a fire in the rear, and his eager walk 
tumbles into a trot, for he feels that he is verily 
guilty, and knows that he is easily accessible ; but 
fate overtakes him, and he is borne igndminiously 
back. Then his mother explains that she had just 
been trying on his new frock, and had remarked 
that she must get some buttons, and so Tommy 
had stolen away, and was going " over-shop-get- 
buttons." 

Accidents, we are told, will happen in the best 
of families, and Tommy awoke one morning and 
found that his nose was out of joint. A little, 
lumpy baby sister had sadly deranged the machin- 
ery of his life, and he did n't know what to make 
of it. Formerly, when he stole out-doors un- 
awares, his pretty young mother used to run out 
after him, and toss him up in her stout, bare arms 
into the house. Now an old woman in a cap came, 
and brought her hand down very heavily on his 
sensitiveness. Then, too, he was ousted out of his 
cradle by the interloper, and his life was in a fair 
way of becoming a burden to him. But his good- 



TOMMY. 237 

nature never failed. To be sure, he would throw 
the plates, and the flat-irons, and the coal into the 
cradle, but it was probably " all in fun," When 
I went in to see " the baby," the first time, he 
pointed to it with great exultation, and as soon 
as tlie blanket was rolled down, first poked his 
finger into her eyes, and then, quick as thought, 
gave her a rousing slap on the cheek. Baliy 
screamed, as she had a right to do, and Tommy 
had the slap returned with compound interest, as 
he richly deserved. 

Yet, in senseless, instinctive fashion, in his wild, 
Irish way, Tommy loved his baby sister. The 
little life drooped and died while the roses were 
yet in bloom. Tommy's baby sister was borne to 
her burial, and Tommy's heart was troubled with 
a blind fear. What it was he did not know, but 
somethino; was wrona;. He lingered about the 
cradle where she lay, and when the tiny form was 
taken up to be placed in the coffin, he plucked 
wildly at her white robe, crying bitterly, and re- 
fused to be comforted. 

Darling little Tommy ! The very thought of 
your happy face, white and soft, and fine as a lily- 
cup, of your merry blue eyes, with their long, 
cui'ling, black eyelashes, of your bungling little 
feet, and your meddlesome little fingers, warms 
my heart. 1[f I could have my way, you should 
always stay just as you are now, only having your 
face washed semi-occasionally. But I cannot have 



238 COUNTRY LIVING. 

my way, and you will by and by run to school 
barefoot, and wear blue overalls, and smoke bad 
tobacco in a dingy pipe, and carry a hod, and vote 
the " dimmocratic ticket." 

So I said last year with foolish human prophecy, 
and now, behold ! there is no democratic ticket 
to vote, and there is no Tommy to vote it. For 
Tommy is gone. Never any more while I live 
shall the gleam of his shining hair light up the 
greensward, or the irregular thumping of his 
copper-toed shoes bring music to my ears as he 
stumbles up the yard and clatters across the 
kitchen-floor. A dreamy October morning, all 
gold and amethyst with the haze of the Indian 
summer, took him beyond my sight over the blue 
waters to the fair island of his fathers, which has 
been to me ever since a " summer isle of Eden, 
lying in dark purple spheres of sea " ; and it 
seemed to me for the moment that nothing would 
be so delightful, nothing looked so winning, as 
to leave this surging, eager, battling land, and 
sail over the sea with Tommy, and live quietly in. 
a little brown cottage on the border of Donegal 
bog, with a well-burnt pipe in the cupboard, plenty 
of peat on the fire, potatoes smoking in the ashes, 
a fine fat pig in the corner, and nothing to be 
careful or troubled about all the days of my life. 

While I grieve for Tommy gone, T reflect that 
he would probably be a little pest if he had stayed. 
Already his feet were swift to do mischief. His 



TOMMY. 239 

rosy lips could swear you as round an oatli as 
any Flanders soldiers, and he beat the calf, and 
chased the hens, and worried the sheep, and poked 
the cow, and pvilled the cat's tail, and worked the 
key out of the door and lost it, and was perpet- 
ually carrying oflp the hoe, and making the gravel 
fly, and surreptitiously possessing himself of the 
whip. Fumble, rattle, — Tommy is at the door ; 
creak, creak, — he has got it open ; thump, thump, 
thump, — he is making for the whip ; silence, — 
he is getting it down. " Tommy ! Tommy ! don't 
touch the whip, will you ? " " No," says Tommy, 
stoutly, in the very act of marching off with it 
firmly clasped in both hands, brandishing it right 
and left, and whisking every living thing, and 
dead ones too, that came in his way, or that did n't, 
either, for that matter. 

In the warm, moonlight evening. Tommy sits 
again in a high chair in the porch, and his mother 
tells me of the home to which she is going in Ire- 
land, and of the schools which Tommy will attend, 
and the books that he will study, and she promises 
to send me one to look at, but I greatly fear it will 
never reach me. As the conversation proceeds, I 
am driven into a corner, and forced to admit that I 
do not reckon among my acquisitions an acquaint- 
ance with the Irish language. She is silent for a 
moment, and never fails in the politeness of her 
race ; but I do not think I shall ever quite recover 
the ground which that revelation cost me. I fear 



240 COUNTRY LIVING. 

me my reputation is permanently lowered. Tom- 
my, climbing in and ont of his high chair, up his 
mother's neck, and down the porch steps, wiggling 
everywhere, and clawing everything, takes part in 
the pleasant chat. " Where are you going, Thomas, 
by and by ? " asks his mother, designing to show 
his paces. " Kitty, kitty," gurgles Tommy, mak- 
ing a dive after the kitten. " Now, Thomas," says 
she, drawing him back with a strong arm, " tell 
'em where you 're going next month, in a ship, 
you know, over the water." " Cow," says Tom- 
my, perversely, having a mortal aversion to water, 
wholesale and retail. But I know a quick way to 
his tongue. " Tommy, tell me where you are 
going, and I '11 give you a sugar-plum." " Isle," 
says he, with a fine brogue, rapidly coming to his 
senses. " An' tell 'em what '11 your gran'father 
be sayin' to you, when he sees you." A pink pep- 
permint in my hand becoming visible to the naked 
eye, he answers promptly, " Ye ! ga ! Tom ! wi I 
ko ! yah ! bk ! " which, being interpreted, means, 
" Here comes Tom with the clock on his back," 
referring to a clock which is to be carried with 
them, and which he evidently believes will be his 
own personal luggage. Sometimes his answer 
turns into " Here 's Tom, coming in at the door ! " 
which seems to me to indicate a decided dramatic 
power. " Tommy," I say, pathetically, " I am 
afraid you will forget all about me when you go 
to Ireland." " Iss," roars Tommy, backing out 



TOMMY. 241 

from under his chair. " But I want you not to 
forget. Stand still, now, and tell me what my 
name is." " Yah ! " shouts Tommy, jumping up 
and down. " Yah what ? " " Yah Yah! " And 
even when the last morning comes, — when Tom- 
my, gay with scarlet frock and feather, and " bran 
new " shoes, is borne in his mother's arms up the 
steps to say his last good-by, — the hard-hearted 
little pagan is utterly unmoved by her tears, and 
only jounces up and down, and cries, " Ride ! 
Horse ! " and, in virtue of a doughnut in each fist, 
inarches off for fatherland, triumphant. 

But Ireland is glorified henceforth. I see no 
more there want, nor squalor, nor suffering, but 
verdurous meadow-depths, and a little child crowned 
with myrtle and arbutus, flinging around him the 
crushed- wealth of daisy and primroses and gold 
cups, while his upturned face, shining against the 
morning sun, is as it were the face of an angel. 

God bless the Irish ! I cannot choose but love 
them. They do unearthly things, I know, and 
are a grief of heart to the sorely-tried housewives. 
One whole winter did Bridget sweep my room, 
and invariably set the table with the drawer toward 
the wall. Never by any mistake did it happen to 
come right side out. Patsy had a way of swoop- 
ing up all the contents of all the wash-hand-stands, 
in her regular round with broom and duster, and 
distributing them again without respect of persons. 
Accordingly, your own stand would be garnished 
11 p 



242 COUNTRY LIVING. 

with the tooth-brush of your neighbor on the right, 
the nail-brush of your neighbor on the left, the 
hair-brush of your neighbor above, and the hat- 
brush of your neighbor below. But Patsy is a 
diamond in the rough. I wrote a love-letter for 
her once. She came to me beaming with ruddy 
shyness, and, after baching and filling for fifteen 
minutes, gave me to understand that her lover was 
by " the far Avash of Australasian seas," and would 
I write him a letter for her. He was a fond swain, 
but she had been coy and coquettish, and, now 
that he was so far away, her heart relented. Did 
I write to him ? Of course I did, conjecturing, to 
the best of my ability, Avhat manner of document 
a love-letter should be, and determining that at 
least it should not lack the quality which gives it 
a name. So, after exhausting my own vocabulary, 
I had recourse to the poets, and quoted Tennyson. 
It smote me in the heart to look up when I had 
read it to her, and see her beautiful almond eyes 
filled with tears ; for though one's own love-letters 
may be a serious enough matter, one can hardly 
voice another's tenderness with entire good faith. 
" Oh ! " said Patsy, with a sigh from the very bot- 
tom of her warm Irish heart, " them is jes' my 
feelin's," and even put her head back through the 
door after going out, to add, " An' sure, ye must 
have had them feelin's yourself, or ye niver could 
have done it." "Ah, Patsy!" I said, — but 
never mind what I said. 



T03IMY. 243 

God l)less the Irish I They supply an element 
that is wanting to our Anglo-Saxon blood, the 
easy, eloquent, picturesque race. Their rest is 
such a cushion to our restlessness. As they mount 
the ladder, their individualities lose outline, but 
an Irish poor ftimily is world-wide from an Ameri- 
can poor iamily. The Americans will be so sharp 
and angular, and clearly defined. They will have 
such an air of having seen better days, and not 
giving up seeing them again. Their poverty is 
self-conscious, and draws comparisons. A painful 
scrubbiness is in the air. Everything is neat, 
whitewashed, and made the most of Evidently 
they are struggling against fate. They contest 
every inch of ground. If you offer them assist- 
ance, you must double and turn, and ten to one 
give mortal offence after all. I know these are 
the very things that the books applaud, and I 
suppose they are one of the bases of greatness ; 
but for solid comfort, give me an Irish shanty, 
where all are dirty and happy and contented. 
For the spare, stooping American mother, with 
thin hair, pointed elbows, and never fewer than 
forty years, you have the Irish matron, always 
young, — red, round arms, luxuriantly full figure, 
great white teeth, head set back, and royal hair. 
You are received with nonchalant courtesy, and 
your " remainder biscuit " with graceful gratitude. 
No care furrows any forehead. If the baby creeps 
into the ashes, one blacksmithy arm whips him 



244 COUNTRY LIVING. 

out again as good as new. In winter tlie air is 
warm with the mingled odor of soapsuds, boiUng 
cabbage, and fragrant tobacco. In the summer 
they set their wash-tubs at the back door, and, in 
a sensible scantiness of costume, rub to the robin's 
song, and never seem to look forward to a pos- 
sible presidency. They float across the tide ac- 
quiescent. Thus poverty is robbed of its sting. 

If one must be poor, it is so much easier to be 
comfortable about it. And if one is thoroughly 
comfortable, what matter whether one lives in one 
room or twenty ? 

God bless the Irish ! Their strong arms are 
lifted, their warm heai'ts are beating, side by side 
with ours, for the honor and life of their adopted 
country. Does famine impend over their island 
home ? We have enough and to spare. From 
our bursting granaries, from our larders over-full, 
let their tables be spread with plenty. Surely the 
bread, the few crumbs which we cast upon the 
waters, many days ago, are already returned to 
us in Irish truth and loyalty. And when their 
civilization and Christianity are brought abreast 
with their inborn poetry, Ireland shall come forth 
fair as the sun, clear as the moon, and terrible 
as an army with banners. 

Tommy, Tommy, I am loath to leave you. I 
do not see how you can possibly grow up good ; 
but your angel, always beholding the face of our 
Father which is in heaven, may read there plans 



TOMMY. 



245 



of love which my dim eyes cannot discern. To 

God I commend you. Wherever you go, the Lord 

give his angels charge concerning you, to keep 

you in all your ways, and even though 

you worship him blindly, with bell and 

incense and crucifix and rosary, 

may he none the less keep 

your eyes from tears, your 

feet from falling, and 

your soul from 

death. 

G) 



Boston and Home Again. 




NE thing there is in the world which 
I admire. It is hlase people, — peo- 
ple, as Curtis expresses it, who have 
pumped life dry, and the pump only 
wheezes, — people who are not interested in any- 
thing, — people who have gone through the whole 
round of sensations, and have the satisfactory con- 
sciousness of having nothing more to feel, — peo- 
ple who are always self-possessed, never thrown 
off their balance. Attacked from any quarter, 
they are ready. There is the Englisli Quarterly 
Reviewer. He has all things under his feet. He 
is calmly superior to the world, the flesh, and so 
forth. He holds in his hands the reins of the uni- 
verse. He embraces the whole circle of knowl- 
edge. Nothing ever happens to which he cannot 
assign its true cause and prophesy its remotest 
future. He knows more of poetry than the poet, 
more of art than the artist, more of history than 
the historian. He can get more out of anything 
than ever was in it. The scanty grains of infer- 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 247 

mation which you have been able to gather by- 
hard digging into dictionaries and grammars, and 
which you reserve for grand occasions, dwindle to 
nothino; before the huge boulders of learnino; which 
he scoops up and tosses about with his finger-tips 
on the slightest provocation. But the seal of his 
royalty is the air of quiet superiority, of having 
been born to it, with which he handles his re- 
sources, and, awed by which, you abdicate at 
once, feeling it an honor to be tyrannized over 
by such a one. But this is a remarkable world 
in many respects, and in none more so than in 
a certain organic disjointedness. Causes do not 
seem to produce effects. Sequences are arbitrary. 
There is general law, but a great deal of special 
lawlessness. You lay all your plans to accomplish 
an object, and miss of it ; while the good that you 
never dream of obtaining comes to you unsought. 
Machines that work well in theory will not work 
at all in iron. There seems to be no reason why 
the stove should smoke, but it does. I knew a 
man who, at twenty, was given up by his physi- 
cians. His lungs were gone, his stomach was 
going, his heart was capricious, — in short, all his 
internal apparatus seemed to be destroyed or de- 
ranged ; it is plain that, under such circumstances, 
he ouo'ht to have died. If this were a logical 
world, he would have died. On the contrary, 
he most unreasonably persisted in living, and is 
now, at forty, roaming over Europe, climbing the 



248 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Alps, braving the Pontine Marshes, tampering with 
Rhein wine, sauer-kraut, and all manner of foreign 
edibles, and threatens to live out his threescore 
years and ten, unless death comes to him from 
without. Certainly, there is a hitch in the w^orld 
I somewhere. So, though I would give any reason- 
able sum to be hlase and au fait myself, I am in 
fact very far from it. I often become bewildered 
in cities. I lose my purse, and I lose my way, 
and I almost lose my senses. I admire, and 
am astonished. I like to look in at shop win- 
dows, to see a monkey capering to a hand-organ, 
to buy fruit of old women crouching on the cor- 
ners of streets. When I get into an omnibus, I 
never can remember to get out again, and once 
I rode from Boston to Cambridge three times 
before I remembei'ed to pull the strap at the place 
where I wanted to be left. I like to be in a 
crowd, if I am not in a hurry (in a carriage, — I 
should n't like to be on foot, and have all sorts of 
people knocking against me), and see the feathers 
and silks trying to get on, and can't, and men 
elbowing through by the skin of their teeth, and 
truckmen shouting, and wheels interlocking, and 
horses pawing, and timid people looking scared. 
That sounds rather malignant, but it is n't. I 
would not scare them myself for the sake of the 
fun ; but as they are scared independently of any 
effort of mine, I enjoy it simply as a part of the 
pantomime. Besides, I don't see any use in being 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 249 

friglitcned in such a case. I don't expect a coach- 
man to have any especial regard for my individual 
bones, but I do expect him to have a regard for his 
own reputation as a coachman, and for his pocket, 
both of which demand that he should not upset his 
coach and injure his passenger, unless circumstan- 
ces absolutely require it. I take it for granted, 
also, that he understands his business a great deal 
better than I do ; and as he does n't fret about 
my writing, I won't fret about his driving me 
through a crowd. I also like, in passing through 
streets, to count the windows, and see how many 
stories the shops have. I like to talk with news- 
boys, and rag-pickers, and the little beggar-girls, 
and with all sorts of out-of-the-way people. It 
seems to take you into another world. I am al- 
ways awed in the presence of milliners and dress- 
makers. If I have an opinion before I go in, it 
presents itself to them in the form of the meek- 
est and timidest suggestion, and melts away and 
evaporates before their slightest objection. There 
is something in their art perfectly incomprehensible 
to me. I can understand how a locomotive engine 
or a sewing-machine can be made. I think I could 
make one myself, if I were educated to it, and had 
the proper tools ; for a ponderous machine cuts 
out your work by rule, and you put it together, 
one engine just like another. But a milliner must 
have creative power. She must conceive an idea 
of every bonnet separately, and then, from a wil- 
11* 



/ 250 COUNTRY LIVING. 

derness of silk and straw and lace and flowers, she 
must evoke the perfect bonnet, every one sepa- 
rately, and every one adapted to the figure, com- 
plexion, and character of every separate wearer, — 
and this for months and years continuously. 

But of course all this is incompatible with that 
air of savoir /aire which is at once my admiration 
and my despair. You cannot be tranquilly inter- 
ested and keenly indifferent at the same time. 
And how can one go up from the country, where 
the quiet is a perpetual Sabbath, into the city, 
where life whirls in ten thousand different forms, 
and not be interested, — and not show it ? I have 
had opportunities to observe my sex in the transi- 
tion state, and I am forced to say that I do not 
think the female traveller is always a pleasant object 
of contemplation. She is never quite free from 
anxiety or bundles, and is generally pretty highly 
charged with both. She asks the conductor the 
same question twice, as if she believed he might 
undergo a moral reformation between the first and 
second asking, and tell the truth at last, though he 
told a lie at first. Sweetly patient at home, sub- 
limely patient in great pain or peril, she is ludi- 
crously impatient on her travels. She cannot wait 
the march of events, but outstrips the present, an- 
ticipates the future, and asks the conductor " if we 
change cars at B." Trustful to a fault in the do- 
mestic circle, she becomes a very sceptic in the 
cars, and never believes him unless he says "Yes." 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN 251 

When he announces at B., " Passengers chano-e 
cars for the East," she steps out with alacrity upon 
the platform, and immediately asks him, " Do we 
change cars here?" Acute of vision, and rapid in 
perception at home, abroad a glamour seems to fall 
upon her. The time-table invariably hangs upon 
the station-walls, but, as if incapable of calculation, 
she invariably asks the ticket-master at what hour 
the train is due ; and if it is five minutes late, she 
o-oes to him aiiain, and asks him how lono; before 
it will arrive. Of course, observing the inconse- 
quence of these and similar vagaries, I am espe- 
cially careful to avoid them. You will presently 
see how I succeed.) 

I will, however, say this in extenuation, that no 
city has any moral right to be as crooked as Bos- 
ton. It is a crookedness without excuse, and 
without palliation. It is crooked in cold blood, 
and with malice aforethought. It goes askew 
when it might just as easily go straiglit. It is 
illogical, inconsequent, and incoherent. 'Nowhere 
leads to anywhere in particular. You start from 
any given point, and you are just as likely to come 
out at one place as another^ Of course, all this can 
but have an effect on the inhabitants. Straight- 
forwardness becomes impossible where you are 
continually pitching up against sharp points. Peo- 
ple born and bred in angles, and blind alleys, and 
cross-ways, cannot fail to have a knack at ter- 
giversation and intrigue. Diplomatists should be 



252 COUNTRY LIVING. 

chosen from Boston, or should at least take a pre- 
paratory course of five years there, as soldiers do 
at West Point. 

The number of the streets is amazing. The 
Bostonians seem to have a perfect frenzy for them. 
If they can squeeze in a six-foot passage between 
two houses, they are happy. Half a dozen stairs 
and a brick platform is an avenue and an elysium. 
They build tlieir houses in the shape of a letter V, 
with the point sticking out in front, apparently for 
no other reason than the exquisite satisfaction of 
having a street pass up each side ; and they make 
their streets crooked to look at, and then make 
alleys to get there. Washington Street, the prin- 
cipal thoroughfare, 

" Like fi wounded snake drags its slow length along." 

I have heard that it was originated by cows, me- 
andering down to drink. This hypothesis may 
answer in the one case, but it won't apply to the 
smaller streets, for a cow could not make so acute 
angles if she tried. Owing to this vaccine inabil- 
ity, Washington street rolls on with considerable 
dignity for awhile, but it goes off into a deliri- 
um tremens down by Cornhill and Dock Square. 
Everything is as shifting as a kaleidoscope. When 
you set out from the Revere House, you observed 
the landmarks. There was " Oliver H. Brooks, 
Eating-House," set in the middle of the road, and 
peaked of course. That is easy to remember. 
But Avhen you get back into the maze, the thing is 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 253 

there, to be sure, wedging itself into space, but it 
is no longer Oliver H. Brooks's Eating-House ; it 
is B. F. Paine's Fruit of all kinds Chamois. You 
go to the very spot where the Revere House stood 
in the morning. It has died and left no sign, 
and a block of brick houses reigns in its stead. 
When you went up Cornhill, " V. B. Palmer '' 
stood at the head of it in gold letters, but when 
you come back V. B. has trotted off, and the vari- 
ous religious and publishing societies which con- 
gregate there have, in the incredibly short space 
of two hours, given way to Mr. Blake's Furnish- 
ing Rooms, or the Quincy House. As for Faneuil 
Hall, it is perpetually dancing a jig with Dock 
Square. Places that you are in a hurry to come 
at, are never " at home." Places that you don't 
want, are continually turning up. You may wan- 
der about in that benighted region for hours, and 
every corner you turn, there will be Faneuil Hall 
prancing before yovir eyes as pert and coquettish 
as if each time were the first. It is always within 
a stone's throw, but you never get close to it. I 
don't believe anybody ever did get close to it. 
And you never see it standing square. You never 
have a front view, nor a side view, but always a 
corner view. It must have secret springs, for if 
you make a flank movement, with the sole object 
of o;ettino; it in a straight line, it will manage to cut 
a pirouette, and present angles. Jefferson Davis 
threatened to go into winter quarters in Faneuil 



254 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Hall. I wish he had. A sure way to stop the 
rebellion without bloodshed would be to bring 
him and his whole army to Faneuil Hall and 
suburbs. They never would find their way out 
again. I would not blindfold them. I would 
give them every clew that they chose. After 
they were once in, Boston could just shake 
herself, the clews would be good for nothing, 
and Massachusetts nurseries for a thousand years 
would shiver at twilight over stories of wandering 
ghosts, with phantom barred flags and shadowy 
Golden Circles, wandering, weeping, wailing, in 
the alleys of Dock Square, and moaning ever and 
anon, like Sterne's starling, " I can't get out." I 
mention only Dock Square, but there are, as the 
Yankees say, " lots of 'em." That one has made 
the deepest impression on me, for whenever I am 
lost, I drift into that, and it seems like the night- 
mare. I suppose it is called " Square," on the 
same principle that the only man in the House 
of Representatives who cannot make a speech is 
called Mr. Speaker. Certainly there never was 
such a misnomer as Dock Square. . Dock Dodeca- 
gon would be nearer the truth, but that would 
only approximate it, for a dodecagon has regular 
sides, and there is not a regular side to anything, 
from one end of Boston to the other, let alone 
Dock Square, which has no sides at all, but con- 
sists solely of corners. 

That the crookedness of Boston is not external 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 255 

only, but strikes in, there is abundant proof. You 
go into a sliop, — Kinmonth's, for instance. You 
founder at once in a raging sea of agitated silks 
and laces and feathers. Appalled, you turn to 
Turnbull's, next door. Another sea, but some- 
thing must be done. You want sixpence Avortii 
of galloon. At home, in your one little " cheap 
cash store," you could get it, and be gone, in two 
minutes ; but the female population of the rural 
districts has a mortal aversion to buying anything 
at home that can be bought in Boston. The 
grandeur of the metropolis seems to cling around 
whatever radiates from it into the country, even 
though it be only a paper of pins. So, feeling very 
tall, and awkward, and conspicuous, you timidly ask 
the first clerk to whom you gain access for galloon. 
" Back part of the store," says he, briskly, and 
turns to the next comer. You color away up to 
your hair, and down under your collar, feeling- 
guilty and ashamed, and very rustic, — as if you 
ought to have known, by instinct or education, 
that galloon is never to be found in the front 
ranks. You flounder through the press into the 
back part of the store, and repeat your request 
Avitli as much au fait as you can assume. " Back 
part of the store," jerks clerk No. 2, and is off in 
a twinkling, and there you are, stranded high and 
dry. It turns out that what you thought was the 
back ])art of the store is only' the beginning of 
another room at right angles with the first, — and 



256 COUNTRY LIVING. 

so yon go on, and the rooms go on. Yon are shot 
up by some pop-gun of a clerk from counter to 
counter, from room to room, fondly thinking every 
one to be the last, but finding in the backest part 
a backer part, — (vide Milton,) — till, after making 
half a dozen angles of incidence and reflection, 
you get your galloon, and — there is the door 
close by you ! Is Turnbull's, then, built circu- 
larly ? Have you circumnavigated it till, as the 
old geographies used to say, you have arrived 
at the point from which you started, in an op- 
posite direction ? In your bewilderment, this 
is not difficult to believe, and you depart, but 
everything Avithout is changed. The din seems 
hushed, or far off. The tide of drays and omni- 
buses has ebbed. You remember that Kin- 
month's was next door, — yes, there is Kin- 
month's, but no longer next door ; it has stepped 
across the street and stands opposite, and the big 
sign has dwindled into a little one. Terror- 
struck, you strike out at random, fearful lest the 
Merlin, or Math, or Michael Scott, who roams in 
Boston, stretch forth his wand again ; sign, shop, 
and city disappear before your eyes, and you 
find yourself wandering among the forests and 
wigwams of Shawraut. 

Boston, moreover, has a way of contracting and 
expanding herself that is marvellous in country 
eyes. You shall, for instance, be in search of 
Number Thirty-three. Passing up the street, 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 257 

reading eagerly every sign, you count " twenty- 
seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine," — and then 
there is a sudden leap over to thirtj^-eight ! 
What now ? You look again, fancying you 
must have made a mistake. No, this door is 
certainly twenty-nine, and the next is certainly 
thirty-eight, if you can read Arabic characters. 
Eight houses, therefore, must be squeezed into 
one brick partition-wall. You think of micro- 
scopes. You wonder if the houses are to be 
pulled out one after another, as Mr. Hermann 
prestidigitates twenty apples and fifty tin cups out 
of one empty old hat. Presently, you summon 
courage to go into a neighboring shop, and re- 
quest to be enlightened. They inform you that 
the missing numbers are attached to the doors 
of rooms inside. A most extraordinary circum- 
stance ! It is generally supposed that a house 
means a house. In Boston, however, it appears 
to mean only a room. Number Ten does not 
necessarily indicate the tenth house on the street. 
You must fumble through the dark passages and 
over the strange staircases within before you can 
be sure that it does not point out the tenth room. 
If we should go and do likewise in the country, 
numbering and labelling every barn, corn-barn, 
cider-press, pig-sty, dog-kennel, hen-coop, and 
dove-cot, we should have quite a little settle- 
ment at every homestead. 

The result of it all is, that you never know 



258 COUNTRY LIVING. 

how much ground you have been over, nor 
where you ought to stop. You make your way 
to the dry-goods desk in a shop, and ask for pop- 
lins, overhaul them all, find nothing to suit, and 
go on till you come to another shop, and by a 
similar process are passed up to a similar desk, 
and repeat your meek inquiry. " You looked at 
all our poplins a few moments ago," says the clerk, 
politely. You lift your eyes quickly to his face. 
Yes, it is the same man and the same place that 
you went to before, — and then do you not feel 
amiable? Yet you have been a Sabbath-day's 
journey since then. How in the world, then, 
came you back again ? Because these wary 
merchants open doors and send out feelers in all 
directions, and there is nothing for a poor, silly 
little fly like you to do but walk into their par- 
lors whichever way you turn. 

But Boston, though crooked and inexplicable, 
is not without her charms. " God made the 
country and man made the town," as a general 
fact. But there is a good deal in Boston that 
man never made and never will. 

Come, behold the works of the Lord. You need 
not turn yourself into a polar bear with furs, live 
on raw frozen walrus beef, tallow candles, and 
blubber, be drawn by dogs, and sleep in a hut with 
a naked Esquimaux baby for a pillow, — nor need 
you brave the snakes and scorpions and hurricanes 
of the tropics, or plunge full many a fathom deep 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 259 

in the gliost-enpcopled sea, — to gaze u[)oii the 
wonderful works of God ; for behold they are nigh 
yon, even at your doors. 

Right in the thick of Boston is a glass tank, bio; 
enough to sail a small fleet, and in that tank a huge 
Avhite whale bulges his billowy bulk in a never- 
ending round of treadmill travel. I call him huge, 
but it is relatively. He is, in fact, rather diminu- 
tive for a whale, but he is prodigious for a fish. 
You have studied in Parley's Geography about a 
whale as big as the steeple of the meeting-house, — 
an indefinite, but sublime comparison. You have 
read thrilling narratives of whale captures, — long 
and perilous voyages, boats stove, races run, men 
submerged, shipwreck and suffering and death in 
far-off, mysterious seas. Think then what a tri- 
umph of mind over matter is implied in the fact, 
that for twenty-five cents you can go and sit in 
your best clothes, and look at a whale. But you 
must look closely, or you will not see him ; he but 
just heaves above the surface to breathe, and then 
sinks down till he is only a white mist in the green 
water. What a fortitude the poor fellow needs to 
sustain his change of fortune. Surely, if any one 
ever had right to complain of " reduced circum- 
stances," it is he, wrested from the halls of his 
fathers, from the forests of the vivid-tressed mer- 
maidens, from the crystalline corridors " of his dim 
water- world," to a glass tank, — admission twenty- 
five cents ; children under ten years of age fifteen 



260 COUNTRY LIVING. 

cents. And what a lonely life it is ! There are 
stfurgeons and lobsters and a dolphin, to be sure, 
but they are not like •' own folks." A whale can- 
not be expected to be hand and glove with a lob- 
ster. A sturgeon cannot enter into the feelings of 
a whale. So, as Burke said of Napoleon, " grand, 
gloomy, and peculiar, he sits upon his throne, a 
sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his 
own originality." 

The little dolphin is alone too, but he does not 
seem to mind it. I call him little, but that is also 
relative. Little beside the whale, he is a giant 
among the dolphins, and he sports around the 
whale, a dusky satellite, as gay as a lark, doubling, 
bobbing, and seeming to take life in a very free and 
easy manner. 

" This is a weary world, little Dolphin," one 
can fancy the melancholy whale saying, in sepul- 
chral tones, and with that dignity of bearing which 
the great are wont to employ towards the small. 

" Not a bit of it, Whaley," retorts the dolphin, 
cheerily, with the smart familiarity of ignorance. 

" I am haunted evermore, O Dolphin, by the 
dull brilliancy of golden memories. Did I ever 
sweep around the illimitable shores of an icy conti- 
nent ? Were my pearly whiteness and the splen- 
dor of my opal tints caught from the glow of an 
unsetting sun ? Whence come the diamond moun- 
tains, ruby-crested, that rise forever in my dreams ? 
Do you not remember, O Dolphin, a brighter sky, 
a broader sea, and other shores than these ? " 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 261 

" None to speak of, Whaley. Nothing that 
could hold a candle to this. Cold as Greenland, 
that 's all I remember, and no nice people to look 
at you. Tip-top world : 

' Here we go up, up, up, 

Here we go down, down, downy. 
Here we go backwards and forwards. 
Here we go round, round, roundy.' " 

, And, with a double-and-twisted frisk of his tail, off 
he darts, leaving his gigantic companion to roll on 
his monotonous way " in slow and solemn bright- 
ness." 

It is amusing to see how the other little fellows 
in the tank keep out of the whale's and the dol- 
phin's orbit. They have caught the fashion, and 
revolve, but they hug the shore. I am sure they 
need not be afraid, for, if there is any truth in 
physiognomy, that whale is a humane and benevo- 
lent individual, and Dolphin is too good-natured, 
with all his giddiness, to harm a fly. But, from 
whatever cause, the " small fry " never come in 
collision with their Anak brethren. It is a very 
easy matter for them to avoid it. Men have to 
move on the same plane, but when haddock meets 
haddock, he can dive, or soar, or pass on one side, 
as he chooses, and this certainly is one of the com- 
pensations foi- being a fish. You encounter Mr. 
Smith, and, because you are a reasoning animal, 
you must keep to the right as the law directs, 
though you wet your feet and get a lung-fever in 



262 COUNTRY LIVING. 

consequence ; but if you were only a bass or a 
cod-fish, you could dart down and go under him, 
or you could strike up and go over him, which 
would save invaluable time, temper, and health. 
Here comes Mrs. Jones under full sail, her silken 
expansiveness resplendent in the morning sun. 
She needs, and should receive, the whole side- 
walk, and a coal-cart presses against the curb- 
stone. What now? A smile, a bow, a graceful 
imdulation, one bird's-eye view of Mrs. Jones, 
and you have alighted on the sidewalk behind 
her, resuming your stroll with unspotted boots 
and unruffled placidity. Elieu ! non ow,nia possu- 
mus omnes ; which means, dear unlearned readers, 
who have never pushed your researches to the last 
page of Webster's Spelling-book, that, though it is 
possible to be a fish, and possible to be a man, it is 
not possible to be both at one and the same mo- 
ment. 

Around the central tank are small tanks full 
of unimagined beauty. The exquisite, elaborate 
forms, and the intense green of sea-plants ; the 
multiplied hues, shifting, flashing, dazzling, — 
green, and purple, and pink, and gold, — of the 
millions of little lives ; the feathery waving of the 
sea-anemone, the burnished scales of the humblest 
trout, the sluggish torpor of the slow, and the 
electric agility of the quick, — inspire you with 
delighted wonder. Little marvellous outbursts of 
life ! For Avhat service were they formed and 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 2G3 

fasliioned ? We see but one, and the ocean teems 
with myriads which no human eye hath seen, or 
shall see ; but does not the great Creator, whose 
name is Love, enjoy the happiness of his lowliest 
creations ? May not his eye dwell delighted on 
the work of his hands ? What presumption for 
us to marvel at the production of beauty which 
ive cannot see ! As if in the broad universe there 
were no eyes but ours ! 

Here is a den of tortoises, excessively ugly, and 
inconceivably heavy of movement. What is re- 
markable about a turtle is, that he is not only 
sluggish, but he does not seem to try to be other- 
wise. He takes pains to be lazy. If he wants to 
go from the u})per to the lower story of his cage, 
instead of climbing or jumping down, he lolls to 
the edge, and then drops off. I have lost my 
early faith in the fable of the hare and the tortoise. 
I believe a hare could get anywhere sooner than a 
tortoise, if he slept all the time. 

Up and down, up and down, tramp the lions, 
and the leopards, and the bears, tramp, tramp, 
tramp, — their fierce hearts beating against their 
prison-bars like restless souls chained, in the cage 
of circumstance, hungering, thirsting, maddened, 
for their native jungles, and the freedom of their 
uncramped, strong limbs. No philosophy, no 
religion, gives them resignation. They cannot 
" find, for outward Eden lost, a paradise within." 
No self-control ennobles them. Their savao-e 



264 COUNTRY LIVING. 

souls know no restraint . but the iron bars 
against which they press in vain. No reason for 
their stolen liberty mitigates the severity of its 
loss. It is nothing to them that they are daily 
waiting on the pleasure and the wisdom of a 
higher race. So, perhaps, our sufferings, — the 
blow that shocks us out of all conventionalities, 
and the inward, silent, hidden torture, — all the 
ache and agony, — "the dull, deep pain, and 
constant anguish of patience," — shall work out 
for other lives, if not for ours, a far more exceed- 
ing and eternal w^eight of glory. 

Time Avould fail me to speak of the deers, and 
the snakes, and the squirrels, the porcupines, the 
woodchucks, and the guinea-pigs, the rats, and 
the cats, and the kangaroos. There will always 
be a CTOwd watching the frisky little monkeys, 
whose bodies are so rollicking, whose faces are 
so dismal, and whose gymnastics are so almost 
incredible. And if you are not too fastidious to 
join the crowd, you will see some display of 
human, as well as of simic nature. A little boy 
near me had long been silently devouring the 
monkeys with his eyes ; presently his father came 
along, and, anxious that his son should — as Ms 
old copy-books doubtless enjoined upon him — 
devote every moment of his time to the acquire- 
ment of useful knowledge, began, in the regu- 
lar Harry and Lucy style, to advise him to 
" watch their motions, observe the variety," &c. 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 265 

Wliy, you dear, good man, as I know you must 
be, what in the world did you suppose your boy 
was doing with those great wide eyes of liis ? Set 
any boy down before a cage of monkeys, and see 
if you can make him do anything else than watch 
their motions ! 

Do not forget the seal, the sea-dog, round, fat, 
and sleek, with full, pathetic eyes. What name- 
less tragedy, far back in the history of the race, 
has left those mute, appealing eyes ? — a monu- 
ment more durable than brass. Fortunately, the 
tragedy has not affected his appetite, as the alac- 
rity with which he gulps down a piece of fish as 
big as your arm, and then looks up at you as 
tragic and trusting as if he had not swallowed a 
morsel, and you never suspected he had, abun- 
dantly testifies. Our seal has accomplishments, 
too. He jerks a waddling kind of a duck at you, 
and thinks it is a bow. He flops up and turns a 
crank, calling it a hand-organ. As his education 
is still going on, there is no telling what attrac- 
tions he may not finally attain. 

So the tropics and the frozen North-land meet. 
Sea and shore give up the wonders which are in 
them ; and in the midst of man's work and man's 
devices, we say, with reverent hearts, " The earth 
is full of the riches of the Lord." 

And Boston is not only valuable as a depository 
of curiosities and dry-goods, but she has her beau- 
tiful aspects. I will tell you how to arrive at 

12 



266 COUNTRY LIVING. 

one of them. Sleep soundly through a winter 
night in one of those rural cities in her suburbs 
that lie toward the sunset. Rise early on the 
fine, frosty morning. The snow lies six inches 
deep on the ground, and is covered with ice. 
Every tree is heavy fruited with gems, pale and 
pearly now, but the up-coming sun shall kindle 
them to prismatic fire. Take possession of some 

good friend who owns a , I have forgotten 

the name, but it is a square box on runners, and 
is either a pun, or a pung, or a bun, or a bung, 
and coax him to harness his horse and drive you 
into Boston. Then you shall see her glorified. 
The keen air clarifies your vision, thrills your 
blood, and tingles through your soul. At first, 
Boston wraps herself in mist, and is a city of the 
clouds, invisible to earth-born. But the sun, 
coming up from the Under-Land, sends his her- 
alds before, and the vapor glows into amethyst. 
Still the heralds come, — the sky grows rosy, the 
swelling dome that crowns the three-hilled city 
mounts up from the vapor sea, the church spires 
shoot golden arrows into the ruddy heavens, — 
all is soft, and sparkling, and beautiful. 

Boston, you are more beautiful than this. When, 
after long absence and wandering, I come over the 
marshes to meet you, you are lovely as the day. 
I wait for you as they that watch for the morning, 
and when your stately dome curves its clear con- 
tour against the blue sky, " my heart swells and 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 2G7 

my eyes are dim." Beloved Queen of my beloved 
State, the archers have sorely grieved you, and 
shot at you, and hated you, but your bow abides 
in strength. When envious rivals traduce you, I 
make no defence. " She needs none. There she 
is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves." When 
I am asked, " What is thy beloved more than an- 
other beloved ? " 1 only say, " My beloved is mine,''' 
but I think of all the grandeur garnered there, of 
all your inheritance, all your possession, and all 
the promise of your future. 

Yet, O Boston, I have somewhat even against 
you. There are stains vipon your escutcheon. 
There is blood upon your garments. I have heard 
that you once, in blind fury, placed a rope around 
the neck of an innocent man, and dragged him 
through your streets. What tears shall wash out 
the footprints you made that day ? I have heard 
that iron chains once clanked around your noble 
court-house, that white-haired judges passed under 
the yoke, and that you let a man be dragged back 
mto the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Do you 
say that it was not your fault ? Did your loyalty 
to law clash with your loyalty to God? But how 
was it when, not two years ago, you stood up with 
deliberate intent to crush free speech? Where 
then was your loyalty to law ? Where was your 
manhood ? Where was your honor ? Where was 
your chivalry ? Where your high birth and breed- 
ing? W^ith malice prepense yon assembled your 



268 COUNTRY LIVING. 

" merchant princes," and lewd fellows of the basest 
sort, and placed a knife at the throat of liberty. 
You stabbed the breast that cherished your infancy. 
You shamed the mother that bore you. The guilt, 
if not the stam, of blood is at your door. 

O Boston, Boston ! be as crooked as you like, 
waltz as bewilderingly as you will, but keep your- 
self pure. Sully not your fair fame. Play not 
false to humanity. Shame not the memory of your 
fathers. Make atonement to-day for the sins of 
the past, if so be the Lord will yet have mercy 
u2)on you. Now is the accepted time. Gird thy 
sword upon thy thigh, and in thy majesty ride 
prosperously, because of truth and meekness and 
righteousness. Let thine arrows be sharp in the 
hearts of the kino-'s enemies. Love rio;hteousness 
and hate wickedness. So shall the king greatly 
desire thy beauty, and make thy name to be re- 
membered in all generations. 

But shopping and sight-seeing, like all things 
earthly, must come to an end, and having accom- 
plished a few of my thousand and one errands, I 
— for whether I have in this narrative said " you " 
or "I," it all means myself — turned my fece 
homeward. I did not wish to go by the direct 
route, but through Salem, stopping over one train 
at Melrose. Geography, I regret to say, has al- 
ways been my weak point, and I was quite igno- 
rant of the situation of Melrose, and consequently 
did not know what railroad ran throuoh it. To 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 269 

my country eyes there are railroads and depots 
enougli in Boston to give a separate one to every 
village in the vicinity. I inquired at a shop on 
Cornhill from what depot I should leave foj- ]\Iel- 
rose. They advised me to take the horse cars. 
I did not know horse cars went there. They be- 
lieved they did ; at any rate I could inquire at 
the car-office just above. I started for the car- 
office. " Just above " not seeming to develop 
such an institution, I went into another shop, and 
asked a clerk if he could tell me where the car- 
office was. He asked me what car-office. I was 
vexed with myself for asking stich a question, as 
if, like the man who inquired the way to Boston 
meeting-house, I supposed there was but one in 
the city. I answered, with as much intellectuality 
and cosmopolitanism as I could call up, " The 
Meh'ose office." " Why," said he, " there it is, 
right there." There, sure enough, it was before 
my face and eyes, in staring capitals, " Maiden and 
Melrose Railroad." I launched another thunder- 
bolt against myself for my blindness, and went 
in, determined to be on my guard and ask no 
more foolish questions. A woman was transact- 
ing business with the clerk, and, while waiting, 
I reflected that the question I set out with, viz. 
if the cars went to Melrose, would be a foolish 
one, after seeing the sign, and I would therefore 
simply ask at what hour they left. Having made 
this resolution I had leisure to observe the woman 



270 COUNTRY LIVING. 

who was talking with the clerk. She seemed to 
be rather excited. She had, it seemed, paid her 
fare in the cars, the conductor had not given the 
right change back, and she wanted the clerk to 
make it right. I could see that it was none of 
his business, but she could not, and was highly 
indignant at his refusal. He directed her to the 
Superintendent of the road as the proper person. 
She remarked, with the air of a Nemesis, that she 
should not come to the office again about it. He 
seemed resigned. She went away, woman-like, 
declaring with her last breath, " You owe me 
twenty-three cents." He had been as polite as 
could be expected, but it was not in human na- 
ture not to retort, " I don't owe you a cent," and 
then, turning to a gentleman near by, he added, 
" There 's a woman says I owe her twenty-three 
cents, and I never had any dealings with her in 
my life." All my womanhood blushed at this 
woman's unreasonableness ; I determined to try 
to obliterate the impression from his mind by the 
utmost consideration and politeness ; and blandly 
asked, putting a good deal of sympathy for his 
embarrassing position into my manner, " Will you 
be so good as to tell me at what hour the cars 
leave for Melrose ? " 

" They don't leave at all. They don't go there." 
I could have borne the disappointment of fruit- 
less search with fortitude ; but to be baffled in my 
magnanimity was too much. I am afraid I lost 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 271 

my temper for a moment, and that the clerk found 
it in my impetuous question, " What under the 
sun do you have that sign there for then ? " He 
muttered something about a charter, which was 
probably satisfactory to himself, but of little avail 
to my wounded feelings, and, in the chaotic state 
of my mind, I could hardly be blamed for asking 
the first question that came up, " What time do 
the steam-cars go to Melrose ? " He did n't know, 
and I perceived that I had fallen into a trap again. 
Of course he did n't ; he had nothing to do with 
steam-cars. I went back to the original shop. 
They were very polite, and looked up evidence, 
and decided that the Boston and Maine Railroad 
was the one. They directed me to the depot, but 
they killed me with kindness, for one told me to 
take this street, and another said tliat street was 
nearer, and a third said the first street was just as 
near, and they all seemed to talk together, though 
I don't suppose they did, and I was conscious of 
nothing but a din of " Union Street," and " Brat- 
tle Street," and " Haymarket Square," which 
quite bewildered me, though I endeavored to look 
as if I comprehended everything clearly, and said 
yes all round, anxious only to get out doors and 
into the next shop, to inquire the way to the Bos- 
ton and Maine Railroad depot. Only one thing I 
understood, — that, instead of going out at the 
front door, I was to go " right out this way," but 
" out this way " I could see nothing but windows, 



272 COUNTRY LIVING. 

though, all the while they were talking, I cast 
stolen glances to catch any sign of a door. I was 
determined, however, not to ask another foolish 
question, and merely remarked that I saw no 
mode of egress that way except through the win- 
dows. Then they showed me a basement door, 
through which I made good my escape, grateful 
for their kindness, but not much the wiser. 

By assiduous inquiry, I found my way to the 
depot, and gathered my various packages together. 
Observation and experience both combine to make 
me a firm foe to packages. I lose half my self- 
respect and all my independence unless my hands 
are free. At this time, by circumstances entirely 
beyond my control, I was the proprietor of five 
different articles, — a package of books and paper, 
cumbrous and heavy, a travelling-basket bursting 
full, as I particularly dislike to see travelling-bas- 
kets, a roll of cloth, a parasol, and a bottle of yeast. 
One of the pleasantest feelings in the world is that 
of being master of one's position ; but when one is 
weighed down with bundles, one is its victim, and 
I got into the cars under a deep sense of degrada- 
tion, though innocent of any palpable sin. The 
cars were full. I walked slowly through till a 
gentleman arose and gave me his seat. Men make 
so much ado about the ingratitude and impolite- 
ness of travelling w^omen, that I make a point of 
acknowledging the smallest courtesy; but just as 
I was putting on my most grateful expression to 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 273 

thank him in, it suddenly occurred to me that this 
seat, being next to the stove, might prove fatal to 
my yeast-bottle. I had been particularly warned 
not even to let it come in contact with my person 
more than was necessary, lest the warmth should 
make it ferment, — and to sit in front of a red-hot 
air-tight stove I I could have borne to lose the 
yeast, though it was a new kind, said to be of a 
superior quality, which I was taking home for 
trial ; nor should I have been inconsolable for the 
loss of my dress, though it was my best silk ; but I 
did not feel that I could endure the scene. In my 
consternation, I forgot to thank the gentleman, to 
whom I now make this public apology and ex- 
planation. I at length managed to lift the window 
about an inch and a quarter, and held the bottle in 
the draft, and my peace as well as I could. 

I thought Melrose was the first station from Bos- 
ton, but it was not. The s-econd one did not sound 
like Melrose, and I kept my seat. Then I began 
to fear that I had missed it, so I compromised with 
my principles, and asked my seat-mate if he knew 
which station from Boston Melrose was. He said 
he did not, but should know it when he saw it. 
By and by he said this was it. I do not like to 
see people, particularly women, hurry out before 
cars stop, or in before passengers are out, but I 
had many encumbrances and could not move rap- 
idly, so I thought I would for once take time by 
the forelock and just move down the aisle to be 

12* K 



274 COUNTRY LIVING. 

near the door when the cars stopped. I accord- 
ingly did so, and the conductor opened the door 
and shouted, " Wy-o-ming ! " and, partly to punish 
myself, and partly because of the difficulty of re- 
turning to my seat, I stood up in the aisle, covered 
with shame, till we reached Melrose. 

My errand there being performed, I returned to 
the station in ample time, — indeed, long before the 
ticket-office was opened. There was a glass win- 
dow looking into the ladies' room, and a corre- 
sponding one into the gentleman's room. Presently 
a large boy walked in and established communica- 
tion between the office and the men's room, but 
left ours alone. There were several women in the 
room, who all seemed to take it very coolly, and I 
was not going to be anxious. Still, as the time 
passed and the window was not opened, I did think 
it rather strange. By and by the whistle began to 
whistle, and the cars rushed in. I supposed they 
must be some branch, or extra train ; but to make 
certain, I said, carelessly, to an official, " This is 
not the Salem train." " Yes," was the prompt 
reply. Surprised into it, I ejaculated, " Not the 
Salem train ? " " Yes," with equal promptness, 
" last car." I marched along in a most unwilling 
hurry. I think there must have been at least seven 
cars, and under the pressure it seemed to me that 
I never should get to the last one ; so I thought I 
would steal into the nearest, and at the next stop- 
ping-place change to the right one. I turned aside, 



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN. 21b 

but the fellow called out, " Not that, — the last car. 
Be spry 1 " If I had obeyed the impulse of the 
natural heart, I should have hurled my yeast-bottle 
at him, telling me to be " spry," — me who am fa- 
mous for my fleetness of foot, — telling me to be 
spry as if I were a barefoot pond-lily boy ! My dig- 
nity and capacity were both insulted. I was vexed 
with myself for having disregarded his direction, 
and vexed with him for havino- caught me in it. 
If I had been sure that the cars would wait for me, 
I should have loitered, simply to show a proper 
spirit ; but as it was, there was no time for indig- 
nation, and I put my foot on the step just as the 
cars started. But when I went to open the door, 
there Avas no door there. I fumbled and stared 
and rubbed my eyes, but no open sesame will un- 
lock a door that does not exist. The conductor 
came to the rescue, and directed me through a 
hide-and-go-seek chink passage, such as I never 
saw or heard of before, away round on one side 
of the car. In my perturbation I could n't find it 
for a while, and then I could n't tell whether the 
door was at the end or one side, and he kept say- 
ing, " There, there ! " as if I knew where " there " 
was. I meekly remarked that I did n't like to get 
in while cars were going, — a moral reflection which 
I might just as well have spared him. He said 
I could n't fall off if I tried. I knew I could, 
for the railing had only one rail, and that was at 
the top ; but I was so utterly humiliated by such a 



276 COUNTRY LIVING. 

series of disasters, that I let him have everything 
his own way, and was glad to drop into a seat at 
last. 

We rustics have a phrase " starched up." When 
we say a man is starched up, we do not at all refer 
to his linen, but to his character. We also, in 
continuance of the same figure, talk of taking the 
starch out of him. That was the way I felt. The 
starch was completely taken out of me. I did not 
become reglutinated till I impinged upon Halicar- 
nassus. With him, whatever my feelings may be, 
I find it necessary always to maintain an aspect of 
superiority and self-satisfaction. If I should once 
suffer him to see me discomfited by any opposing 
force whatever, I should at once lose all power over 
him. The sole basis of my authority is his implicit 
belief in my thorough invulnerability. There- 
fore, nothing and nobody as I felt myself, 
I sloughed it all off when I stepped from 
the train and stood before him, an 
invincible armada. My foot 
was on my native heath, 
and my name was 
McGregor. 



Brown-Bread Cakes. 




m ASTES differ. 

That is not an original remark, but 
it is a true one. The Frenchman rolls 
as a sweet morsel under his tongue the 
hind legs of a frog. To the patriotic Chinese, no 
savor is so savory as that which arises from roasted 
mouse or broiled puppy. The Esquimaux, plunged 
into the pots and kettles of civilization, moans for 
the delicious blubber and whale-oil which once 
gladdened his heart. Connecticut delights in the 
frying-pan. Meat, bread, rice, turnovers, apples, 
potatoes, hasty-puddings, " whatever goods the 
gods provide her," — and every dweller in her 
valleys will attest they are neither few nor small, 
— she casts incontinently into the sputtering fat, 
till Connecticut joints, from constant lubrication, 
acquire a suppleness which neither age, nor time, 
nor travel, nor the burden of her traditionary nut- 
megs, clocks, and hams, can overcome. 

But thou, O Massachusetts ! land of my birth, 
and thrice and four times land of my love ! queen 



278 COUNTRY LIVING. 

mother of men, reverent children, who turn to 
thee from every shore, and bind on thy brow the 
laurels they learned from thee to win, — will any 
wanderer from thy sturdy soil ever 

" Forget the sky that bent above 
His childhood, like a dream of love ? 
The stream beneath the green hill flowing, 
The broad-armed trees about it growing," 
the smoke from thousand fires ascending, with fragi'ant odors sweetly 
blending, of thousand pans, bright, glazed, and red, a thousand pans 
of hot brown-bread ? 

Nor is thy fame confined to thy children alone. 
From the lumberino- and fishino; East to the mias- 
matic and ague-atic West, an unfortunate race, 
whose veins have never throbbed with Bay State 
blood, who have not sufficient ingenuity to step 
out of the even tenor of their wheat-bread way, 
but whose stomachs have been endowed with a 
sensibility denied to their brains, weekly distend 
their pliant throats with " Boston brown bread." 

Can such a generation be supposed, in the high- 
est flights of its imagination, ever to have soared 
to brown-bread calces ? Is not the attempt to rouse, 
in these sluggish minds, an enthusiasm for the 
ambrosial food, Quixotic to the last degree ? Nay, 
is it possible to introduce into their stolid souls any 
conception of the ethereal flavor which penetrates 
my inmost frame when I sit down to a repast of 
brown-bread cakes ? Yet, in the great multitude 
gathered from every nation under heaven, the 
mighty throng that are making the wilderness of 



Bonnet 


: Head 


Shoe 


: Foot 


Bay 


: Soul 


Canvas 


: Faces 


Cup 


: Wine 


Dew : 


; Rose 


Noon 


: Evening 


Earth ; 


: Heaven 



BROWN-BREAD CAKES. 279 

this New World to bud and blossom as the rose, 
there must needs be a few who have an eye for 
the curve that swells the luxuriant sides of a sweet 
potato, a nose to discern the fumes tliat rise, in- 
cense-like, from a fair, young beefsteak, floating 
in its own sapient juices, a soul to mount upwards 
on the Avino-s of smokino; Mocha ; and since 



Brown-bread : Brown-Bread Cakes; 



or, less mathematically, as a beautiful bonnet to 
the beautiful head that bears it, or a delicate satin 
shoe to the delicate foot that wears it, as the green 
of the deathless bay to the lofty brow that won it, 
as tiie canvas is to the faces that startingly glow 
upon it, as the grace of the golden cup to the 
mantling wine that fills it, as the quivering globe 
of dew to the regal rose that distils it, as the glare 
of the midsummer noon to the scented breath of 
Eden, as the homely and kindly earth to the 
grand and star-lit heaven, — so is the "home-felt 
bliss " which a loaf of brown bread makes, to 
the exquisite thrill of delight arising from brown- 
bread cakes. Because of all this, I will make the 
attempt. 

Let me give the modus operandi. Of fine 



280 COUNTRY LIVING. 

maize flour, yellow as tlie locks of the lovely 
Lenore, take — well, take enough — I cannot 
tell exactly how much ; it depends upon circum- 
stances. Of fresh new milk, white as the brow 
of the charming Arabella, take — I don't know 
exactly how much of that, either ; it depends 
upon circumstances, particularly on the quantity 
of meal. If you have not new milk, take blue 
milk, provided it be sweet ; or if y6u have 
none that is sweet, sour milk will answer ; or 
if " your folks don't keep a cow," take water, 
clear and sparkling as the eyes of the peerless 
Amanda ; but whether it be milk or water, let it 
be scalding as the tears of the outraged Isabel. 
Of molasses, sweet as the tones of the tuneful 
Lisette, take — a great deal, if it is summer, in 
the winter not quite so much (for the reasons 
therefor, see Newton's Treatise on the Expansive 
Power of Fluids., Vol. I. p. 175). Of various 
other substances, animal, vegetable, and mineral, 
which it becomes not me to mention, — first, 
because I have forgotten what they are ; secondly, 
because I never knew ; and, thirdly, because, as 
the irrimortal Toots remarks, " it is of no conse- 
quence," — take whatever seems good in your 
sight, and cast them together into the kneading- 
trough, and knead with all your might and main. 
Provide yourself, then, with a tin plate, not bright 
and new, for so will your cakes be heavy, your 
crust cracked, and your soul sorrowful, but one 



BROWN-BREAD CAKES. 281 

blackened by fire, and venerable with time, and 
rough with service. With your own roseate 
fingers scoop out a portion of the pulpy mass. 
Fear not to touch it ; it is soft, yielding, and 
plastic, as the heart of the affectionate Clara, 
Turn it lovingly over in your hands ; round it ; 
mould it ; caress it ; soften down its asperities ; 
smooth off its angularities ; repress its bold pro- 
tuberances ; encourage its timid shrinkings ; and 
when it is smooth as the velvet cheek of Ida, 
and oval as the classic face of Helen, give one 
" last, long, Imgering look," and lay it tenderly 
in the swart arms of its tutelar plate. Repeat 
the process, until your cakes shall equal the sands 
on the sea-shore or the stars in the sky for mul- 
titude, or as long as your meal holds out, or till 
you are tired. I am prescribing for one only. 
" Ab uno disce omnes." 

To the Stygian cave that yawns dismally from 
the kitchen-stove, consign it without a murmur. 
Item : said stove must have a prodigious crack 
up and down the front. A philosophical reason 
for this I am unable to give. I refer the curious 
in cause and effect to Galen's deservedly cele- 
brated Disquisition on the Relations of Fire and 
3Ietals, passim ; also Debrauche on Dough, p. 35, 
Appendix. I only know that the only stove 
whence I ever saw brown-bread cakes issue had 
an immense crack up and down the front. 

[Since writing the above, a new stove has been 



282 COUNTRY LIVING. 

substituted for the old one, and still brown-bread 
cakes are duly max'shalled every morning. Con- 
sequently, you need not be particular about the 
crack. Still, I would advise all amateurs to con- 
sult the authorities I have mentioned. It will be 
a good exercise.] 

When your cake has for a sufficient length of 
time undergone the ordeal of fire, bring it again 
to the blessed light of day. If the edge be 
black and blistered, like a giant tree blasted by 
the lightning's stroke, or if the crust be rent and 
torn as by internal convulsions, cast it away. It 
is worthless. Trample it under foot. Item : put 
on your stoutest boots, and provide yourself with 
cork soles ; otherwise, the trampling may prove to 
be anything but an agreeable pastime. But if the 
surface be a beautiful auburn brown, crisp, brittle, 
and unbroken, — 

"Joy, joy, forever! your task is done! 
The gates are past, and breakfast is won " ; — 

or, as the clown said of the apple-dumplings, 
" Them 's the jockeys for me." 

If you are an outside barbarian, ignorant of the 
refinements of civilized life, you will at once pro- 
ceed to cut open with your knife the steaming 
cake, as you would an oyster, and thereby render 
it heavy as the heart of the weeping Niobe ; but 
if you are a gentleman and a scholar, you will 
gently sunder its clinging sides without " armed 
interference," and so preserve its spongy, porous 



BROWN-BREAD CAKES. 283 

texture. To tlie uninitiated, one part is as good as 
another ; but let me confidentially whisper in your 
ear, if it should be your duty to pass the plate, 
present to your neighbor that side which bears the 
TUider-crust, as that is liable to be burnt and un- 
j^alatable, and reserve to yourself the smoothly- 
rounded upper crust, which is deliciously tooth- 
some. Lay your portion on your plate, crust 
downward. With your own polished knife (the 
reason of this you will presently perceive) carve 
from the ball of golden butter a lump of mag- 
nificent dimensions. Be not niggardly in this re- 
spect. Exercise toward yourself a large-hearted 
generosity ; for butter sinks into itself, and in 
itself is lost with wonderful rapidity, when it rests 
on a pedestal of hot bread. Press your butter, 
still adhering to your knife, down into the warm, 
soft bread, in various places, forming little wells, 
whose walls are unctuous with the melted luxury, 
and then — O then ! but I cannot sustain the 
picture which my fancy has drawn. 

" My eyes are dim witli childish tears, 
My heart is idly stirred ; 
For the same sound is in my ears 
That in those days I heard. 

" Thus fares it still in our decay, 
Yet mourns the wiser mind 
Less for the crusts time takes away, 
Than those he leaves behind." 

" The bridegroom may forget the bride 
Was made his wedded wife yestreen ; 
The monarch may forget the crown 
That on his head an hour hath been," 



284 



COUNTRY LIVING. 



but never, O brown-bread cakes ! never may your 
taste pass away from my lips, your odor from 
my nostrils, or your memory from my heart, till 
" my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last 
time, the sun in the heavens." 

" Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos." 



^^b^^^^^^Sm 



A Complaint of Friends. 




r'F things would not ran into each other 
so, it would be a thousand times easier 
and a million times pleasanter to get 
■^ on in the world. Let the sheepiness 
be set on one side and the goatiness on the other, 
and immediately you know where you are. It is 
not necessary to ask that there be any increase of 
the one or any diminution of the other, but only 
that each shall pre-empt its own territory and stay 
there. Milk is good, and water is good, but don't 
set the milk-pail under the pump. Pleasure 
softens pain, but pain imbitters pleasure ; and who 
would not rather have his happiness concentrated 
into one memorable day, that shall gleam and glow 
through a lifetime, than have it spread out over a 
dozen comfortable, commonplace, humdrum fore- 
noons and afternoons, each one as like the others 
as two peas in a pod ? Since the law of compen- 
sation obtains, I suppose it is the best law for us ; 
but if it had been left with me, I should have 
made the clever people rich and handsome, and 



286 COUNTRY LIVING. 

left poverty and ugliness to the stupid people ; be- 
cause — don't you see ? — the stupid people won't 
know they are ugly, and won't care if they are 
poor, but the clever people will be hampered and 
tortured. I would have given the good wives to 
the good husbands, and made drunken men marry 
drunken women. Then there would have been 
one family exquisitely happy, instead of two strug- 
gling against misery. I would have made the rose- 
stem downy, and put all the thorns on the thistles. 
I would have gouged out the jewel from the toad's 
head, and given the peacock the nightingale's 
voice, and not set everything so at half and half. 

But that is the way it is. We find the world 
made to our hand. The wise men marry the fool- 
ish virgins, and the splendid virgins marry dolts, 
and matters in general are so mixed up, that the 
choice lies between nice things about spoiled, and 
vile things that are not so bad after all, and it is 
hard to tell sometimes which you like best, or 
which you loathe least. 

I expect to lose every friend I have in the 
world by the publication of this paper — except 
the dunces who are impaled in it. They will 
never read it, and if they do, will never suspect 
I mean them ; while the sensible and true friends, 
who do me good and not evil all the days of their 
lives, will think I am driving at their noble hearts, 
and will at once haul off and leave me inconsola- 
ble. Still I am going to write it. You must open 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 287 

the safety-valve once in a while, even if the steam 
does whiz and shriek, or there will be an explo- 
sion, which is fatal, while the whizzing and shriek- 
ing are only disagreeable. 

Doubtless friendship has its advantages and its 
pleasures ; doubtless hostility has its isolations and 
its revenges: still, if called upon to choose once 
for all between friends and foes, I think, on the 
whole, I should cast my vote for the foes. Twenty 
enemies will not do you the mischief of one friend. 
Enemies you always know where to find. They 
are in fair and square perpetual hostility, and you 
keep your armor on and your sentinels posted ; 
but with friends you are inveigled into a false se- 
curity, and, before you know it, your honor, your 
modesty, your delicacy are scudding before the 
gales. Moreover, with your friend you can never 
make reprisals. If your enemy attacks you, you 
can always strike back and hit hard. You are 
expected to defend yourself against him to the 
top of your bent. He is your legal opponent in 
honorable warfare. You can pour hot-shot into 
him with murderous vigor ; and the more he 
wriggles, the better you feel. In fact, it is rather 
refreshing to measure swords once in a while 
with such a one. You like to exert your power 
and keep yourself in practice. You do not re- 
joice so much in overcoming your enemy as in 
overcoming. If a marble statue could show fight, 
you would just as soon fight it ; but as it cannot, 



288 COUNTRY LIVING. 

you take something that can, and something, be- 
sides, that has had the temerity to attack you, 
and so has made a lawful target of itself. But 
against your friend your hands are tied. He has 
injured you. He has disgusted you. He has in- 
furiated you. But it was most Christianly done. 
You cannot hurl a thunderbolt, or pull a trigger, 
or lisp a syllable, against those amiable monsters 
who with tenderest fingers are sticking pins all 
over you. So you shut fast the doors of your 
lips, and inwardly sigh for a good, stout, brawny, 
malignant foe, who, under any and every cir- 
ciimstance, will design you harm, and on whom 
you can lavish your lusty blows with a hearty 
will and a clear conscience. 

Your enemy keeps clear of you. He neither 
grants nor claims favors. He awards you your 
rights, — no more, no less, — and demands the 
same from you. Consequently there is no fric- 
tion. Your friend, on the contrary, is continually 
getting himself tangled up with you " because 
he is your friend." I have heard that Shelley 
was never better pleased than when his associ- 
ates made free with his coats, boots, and hats for 
their own use, and that he appropriated their 
property in the same way. Shelley was a poet, 
and perhaps idealized his friends. He saw them, 
probably, in a state of pure intellect. I am not 
a poet ; I look at people in the concrete. The 
most obvious thing about my friends is their 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 289 

avoirdupois ; and I prefer that they should wear 
tlieir own cloaks and suffer me to wear mine. 
There is no neck in the world that I want my 
collar to span except my own. It is very ex- 
asperating to me to go to my bookcase and miss 
a book of which I am in immediate and pressing 
need, because an intimate friend has carried it 
off without asking leave, on the score of his in- 
timacy. I have not, and do not wish to have, 
any alliance that shall abrogate the eighth com- 
mandment. A great mistake is lying round loose 
hereabouts, — a mistake fatal to many friendships 
that did run well. The common fallacy is, that 
intimacy dispenses with the necessity of politeness. 
The truth is just the opposite of this. The more 
points of contact there are, the more danger of 
friction there is, and the more carefully should 
people guard against it. If you see a man only 
once a month, it is not of so vital importance that 
you do not trench on his rights, tastes, or wdiims. 
He can bear to be crossed or annoyed occasion- 
ally. If he does not have a very high regard for 
you, it is comparatively unimportant, because 
your paths are generally so diverse. But you 
and the man with whom you dine every day 
have it in your power to make each other ex- 
ceedingly uncomfortable. A very little dropping 
will wear aw^ay rock, if it only keep at it. The 
thing that you would not think of, if it occurred 
only twice a year, becomes an intolerable burden 
13 s • 



290 COUNTRY LIVING. 

■when it happens twice a day. This is where 
husbands and wives run aground. They take too 
much for granted. If they would but see that 
they have something to gain, something to save, 
as well as something to enjoy, it would be better 
for them ; but they proceed on the assumption 
that their love is an inexhaustible tank, and not 
a fountain depending for its supply on the stream 
that trickles into it. So, for every little annoying 
habit, or weakness, or fault, they draw on the 
tank, without being careful to keep the supply 
open, till they awake one morning to find the 
pump dry, and, instead of love, at best, nothing 
but a cold habit of complacence. On the con- 
trary, the more intimate friends become, whether 
married or unmarried, the more scrupulously 
should they strive to repress in themselves every- 
thing annoying, and to cherish both in them- 
selves and each other everything pleasing. While 
each should draw on his love to neutralize the 
faults of his friend, it is suicidal to draw on his 
friend's love to neutralize his own faults. Love 
should be cumulative, since it cannot be station- 
ary. If it does not increase, it decreases. Love, 
like confidence, is a plant of slow growth, and of 
most exotic fragility. It must be constantly and 
tenderly cherished. Every noxious and foreign 
element must be carefully removed from it. All 
sunshine, and sweet airs, and morning dews, and 
evening showers, must breathe upon it perpetual 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 291 

fragrance, or it dies into a hideous and repulsive 
deformity, fit only to be cast out and trodden 
under foot of men, while, properly cultivated, it 
is a Tree of Life. 

Your enemy keeps clear of you, not only in busi- 
ness, but in society. If circumstances thrust him 
into contact with you, he is curt and centrifugal. 
But your friend breaks in upon your " saintly 
solitude" with perfect equanimity. He never for 
a moment harbors a suspicion that he can intrude, 
" becaiase he is your friend." So he drops in on 
his way to the office to chat half an hour over the 
latest news. The half-hour is n't much in itself. 
If it were after dinner, you would n't mind it ; 
but after breakfast every moment " runs itself in 
golden sands," and the break in your time crashes 
a worse break in your temper. " Are you busy ? " 
asks the considerate wretch, adding insult to in- 
jury. What can you do ? Say yes, and wound 
his self-love forever? But he has a wife and 
family. You respect their feelings, smile and smile, 
and are villain enough to be civil with your lips, 
and hide the poison of asps under your tongue, 
till you have a chance to relieve your o'ercharged 
heart by shaking your fist in impotent wrath at 
his retreating form. You will receive the reward 
of your hypocrisy, as you richly deserve, for ten to 
one he will drop in again when he comes back from 
his office, and arrest you wandering in Dreamland 
in the beautiful twilight. Deliiihted to find that 



292 COUNTRY LIVING. 

you are neither reading nor writing, — the absurd 
dolt ! as if a man were n't at work unless he be 
wielding a sledge-hammer ! — he will preach out, 
and prose out, and twaddle out another hour of 
your golden eventide, " because he is your friend." 
You don't care whether he is judge or jury, — 
whether he talks sense or nonsense ; you don't 
want him to talk at all. You don't want him 
there any way. You want to be alone. If you 
don't, why are you sitting there in the deepening 
twilight ? If you wanted him, could n't you send 
for him ? Why don't you go out into the draw- 
ing-room, where are music, and lights, and gay 
people ? What right have I to suppose, that, be- 
cause you are not using your eyes, you are not 
using your brain ? What right have I to set my- • 
self up as judge of the value of your time, and so 
rob you of perhaps the most delicious hour in all 
your day, on pretence that it is of no use to you ? 

— take a pound of flesh clean out of your heart, 
and trip on my smiling way as if I had not earned 
the gallows ? 

And what in Heaven's name is the good of all 
this ceaseless talk ? To what purpose are you 
wearied, exhausted, dragged out and out to the 
very extreme of tenuity ? / A sprightly badinage, 

— a running fire of nonsense for half an hour, — 
a tramp over unfamiliar ground with a familiar 
guide, — a discussion of something with somebody 
who knows all about it, or who, not knowing. 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 293 

wants to learn from you, — a pleasant interchange 
of commonplaces witli a circle of friends around 
the fire, at such hours as you give to society : all 
this is not only tolerable, but agreeable, — often 
positively delightful ; but to have an indifferent 
person, on no score but that of friendship, break 
into your sacred presence, and suck your blood 
through indefinite cycles of time, is an abomina- 
tion. If he clatters on an indifferent subject, you 
can do well enough for fifteen minutes, buoyed up 
by the hope that he will presently have a fit, or be 
sent for, or come to some kind of an end. But 
when you gradually open to the conviction that 
vis inertice rules the hour, and the thing which has 
been is that which shall be, you wax listless ; your 
chariot-wheels drive heavily ; your end of the pole 
drags in the mud, and you speedily wallow in un- 
mitigated disgust. If he broaches a subject on 
which you have a real and deep living interest, 
you shrink from unbosoming yourself to him. You 
feel that it would be sacrileo;e. He feels nothino- 
of the sort. He treads over your heart-strings in 
his cow-hide brogans, and does not see that they 
are not whip-cords. He pokes his gold-headed 
cane in among your treasures, blind to the fact 
that you are clutching both arms around them, that 
no gleam of flashing gold may reveal their where- 
abouts to him. J You draw yourself up in your 
shell, projecting a monosyllabic claw occasionally 
as a sign of continued vitality ; but the pachyderm 



294 COUNTRY LIVING. 

does not withdraw, and you ^gradually lower into 
an indignation, — smothered, fierce, intense. 

Wliy, ivhy, why will people inundate their un- 
fortunate victims with such " weak, washy, ever- 
lasting floods " ? Why will they haul everything 
out into the open day ? Why will they make the 
Holy of Holies common and unclean ? Why will 
they be so ineffably stupid as not to see that there 
is that which speech profanes ? Why will they 
lower their drag-nets into the unfathomable waters, 
in the vain attempt to bring up your pearls and 
gems, whose lustre would pale to ashes in the 
garish light, — whose only sparkle is the deep sea- 
soundings ? Procul, procul este, profani ! 

O, the matchless power of silence ! There are 
words that concentrate in themselves the glory of 
a lifetime ; but there is a silence that is more pre- 
cious than they. Speech ripples over the surface 
of life, but silence sinks into its depths. Airy 
pleasantnesses bubble up in airy, pleasant words. 
Weak sorrows quaver out their shallow being, and 
are not. When the heart is cleft to its core, there 
is no speech nor language. 

Do not now, Messrs. Bores, think to retrieve 
your characters by coming into my house and sit- 
ting mute for two hours. Heaven forbid that your 
blood should be found on my skirts ! but I believe 
I shall kill you, if you do. The only reason why 
I have not laid violent hands on you heretofore is 
that your vapid talk has operated as a wire to con- 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 295 

duct my electricity to the receptive and kindly 
earth ; but if you intrude upon my magnetisms 
without any such life-preserver, your future in this 
world is not worth a crossed sixpence. Your 
silence would break the reed that your talk but 
bruised. The only people with whom it is a joy 
to sit silent are the people with whom it is a joy to 
talk. Clear out ! 

Friendship plays the mischief in the false ideas 
of constancy which are generated and cherished in 
its name, if not by its agency. Your enemies are 
intense, but temporary. Time wears off the edge 
of hostility. It is the alembic in which offences 
are dissolved into thin air, and a calm indifference 
reigns in their stead. But your friends are ex- 
pected to be a permanent arrangement. They 
are not only a sore evil, but of long continuance. 
Adhesiveness seems to be the head and front, the 
bones and blood, of their creed. It is not the direc- 
tion of the quality, but the quality itself, which 
they swear by. Only stick, it is no matter what 
you stick to. Fall out with a man, and you can 
kiss and be friends as soon as you like ; the re- 
cordino- angel will set it down on the credit side 
of his books. Fall in, and you are expected to stay 
in, ad infinitum^ ad nauseam. No matter what 
combination of laws got you there, there you are, 
and there you must stay, for better, for worse, till 
merciful Death you do part, — or you are — " fic- 
kle." You find a man entertaining for an hour, a 



296 COUNTRY LIVING. 

week, a concert, a journey, and presto I you are 
saddled with him forever. What preposterous ab- 
surdity ! Do but look at it calmly. You are 
thrown into contact with a person, and, as in duty 
bound, you proceed to fathom him : for every man 
is a possible revelation. In the deeps of his soul 
there may lie unknown worlds for you. Conse- 
quently you proceed at once to experiment on him. 
It takes a little while to get your tackle in order. 
Then the line begins to run off rapidly, and your 
eager soul cries out, " Ah ! what depth ! What 
perpetual calmness must be down below ! What 
rest is here for all my tumult ! What a grand, 
vast nature is this ! " Surely, surely, you are on 
the high seas. Surely, you will now float serenely 
down the eternities ! But by and by there is a 
kink. You find, that, though the line runs off so 
fast, it does not go down, — it only floats out. A 
current has caught it and bears it on horizontally. 
It does not sink plumb. You have been deceived. 
Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shal- 
low little brook, that you can ford all the year 
round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer 
heats, when you want it most ; or, at best, it is a 
fussy little tormenting river, that won't and can't 
sail a sloop. What are you going to do about it ? 
You are going to wind up your lead and line, 
shoulder your birch canoe, as the old sea-kings 
used, and thrid the deep forests, and scale the pur- 
ple hills, till you come to water again, when you 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 297 

will unroll your lead and line for another essay. 
Is tliat fickleness ? What else can you do ? Miast 
you launch yoiu' bark on the uncyuiet stream, 
against whose pebbly bottom the keel continually 
grates and rasps your nerves — simply that your 
reputation suffer no detriment ? Fickleness ? 
There was no fickleness about it. You were 
trying an experiment which you had every right to 
try. As soon as you were satisfied, you stopped. 
If you had stopped sooner, you would have been 
unsatisfied. If you had stopped later, you would 
have been dissatisfied. It is a criminal contempt 
of the magnificent possibilities of life not to lay 
hold of " God's occasions floating by." It is an 
equally criminal perversion of them to cling tena- 
ciously to what was only the simulacrum of an 
occasion. A man will toil many days and nights 
among the mountains to find an ingot of gold, 
which, found, he bears home with infinite pains 
and just rejoicing ; but he would be a fool who 
should lade his mules with iron-pyrites to justify 
liis labors, however severe. 

Fickleness ! what is it, that we make such an 
ado about it? And what is constancy, that it 
commands such usurious interest? The one is a 
foible only in its relations. The other is only 
thus a virtue. " Fickle as the winds " is our 
death-seal upon a man ; but should we like our 
winds unfickle ? Would a perpetual North- 
easter lay us open to perpetual gratitude? or is 

13* 



298 COUNTRY LIVING. 

a soft South gale to be orisoned and vespered 
forevermore ? 

I am tired of this eternal prating of devotion 
and constancy. It is senseless in itself and harm- 
ful in its tendencies. The dictate of reason is to 
treat men and women as we do oranges. Suck 
all the juice out and then let them go. Where is 
the good of keeping the peel and pulp-cells till 
they get old, dry, and mouldy? Let them go, 
and they will help feed the earth-worms and bugs 
and beetles who can hardly find existence a con- 
tinued banquet, and fertilize the earth which will 
have you give before you receive. Thus they will 
ultimately spring up in new and beautiful shapes. 
Clung to with constancy, they stain your knife 
and napkin, impart a bad odor to your dining- 
room, and degenerate into something that is nei- 
ther pleasant to the eye nor good for food. I 
believe in a rotation of crops, morally and socially, 
as well as agriculturally. When you have taken 
the measure of a man, when you have sounded 
him and know that you cannot wade in him more 
than ankle-deep, when you have got out of him 
all that he has to yield for your soul's sustenance 
and strength, what is the next thing to be done ? 
Obviously, pass him on ; and turn you " to fresh 
woods and pastures new." Do you work him an 
injury ? By no means. Friends that are simply 
glued on, and don't grow out of, are little w^orth. 
He has nothing more for you, nor you for him ; 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 299 

but he may be rich in juices wherewrthal to nour- 
ish the heart of another man, and tlieir two hves, 
set together, may have an endosmose and exos- 
niose whose result shall be richness of soil, grand- 
eur of growth, beauty of foliage, and perfectness 
of fruit ; while you and he would only have lan- 
guished into ai'idity and a stunted crab-ti'ee. 

For my part, I desire to sweep off my old 
friends with tlie old year, and begin the new with 
a clean record. It is a measure absolutely neces- 
sary. The snake does not put on his new skin 
over the old one. He sloughs off the first, before 
he dons the second. He would be a very clumsy 
serpent, if he did not. One cannot have succes- 
sive layers of friendships any more than the snake 
has successive layers of skins. One must adopt 
some system to guard against a congestion of the 
heart from plethora of loves. I go in for the 
much-abused fair-weather, skin-deep, April-shower 
friends, — the friends who will drop off, if let 
alone, — who must be kept awake to be kept at 
all, — who will talk and laugh with you as long 
as it suits your respective humors and you are 
prosperous and happy, — the blessed butterfly-race 
who flutter about your June mornings, and when 
the clouds lower, and the drops patter, and the 
rains descend, and the winds blow, will spread 
their gay wings and float gracefully away to sunny 
Southern lands, where the skies are yet blue and 
the breezes violet-scented. They are not only 



300 COUNTRY LIVING. 

agreeable, but deeply wise. (^So long as a man 
keeps his streamer flying, his sails set, and his hull 
above water, it is pleasant to paddle alongside ; 
but when the sails split, the yards crack, and the 
keel goes staggering down, by all means paddle 
off. Why should you be submerged in his whirl- 
pool ? Will he drown any more easily because 
you are drowning with him ? Lung is lung. He 
dies from want of air, not from want of sympathy. 
When a poor fellow sits down among the ashes, 
the best thing his friends can do is to stand afar 
off. Job bore the loss of property, children, health, 
with equanimity. Satan himself found his match 
there ; and for all his buffe tings. Job sinned not, 
nor charged God foolishly. But Job's three friends 
must needs make an apj)ointment together to come 
and mourn with him and to comfort him, and after 
this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day, — 
and no wonder.") 

Your friends have an intimate knowledge of you 
that is astonishing to contemplate. It is not that 
they know your affairs, which he who runs may 
read, but they know you. From a bit of bone, 
Cuvier could predicate a whole animal, even to 
the hide and hair. Such moral naturalists are 
your dear five hundred friends. It seems to your- 
self that you are immeasurably reticent. You 
know, of a certainty, that you project only the 
smallest possible fragment of yourself. You yield 
your universality to the bond of common brother- 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 301 

hood ; but your individualism — what it is that 
makes you you — withdraws itself naturally, invol- 
untarily, inevitably, into the background, — the 
dim distance which their eyes cannot penetrate. 
But, from the fraction which you do project, they 
construct another you, call it by your name, and 
pass it around for the real, the actual you. You ' 
bristle with jest and laughter and wild wliims, to 
keep them at a distance ; and they fancy this to 
be your every-day equipment. They think your 
life holds constant carnival. It is astonishing what j 
ideas spring up in the heads of sensible people. I 
There are those who assume that a person can ( 
never have had any grief, unless somebody has/ 
died, or he has been disappointed in love, — not j 
knowing that every avenue of joy lies open to the ) ' 
tramp of pain. They see the flashing coronet on 
the queen's brow, and they infer a diamond wo- 
man, not recking of the human heart that throbs 
wildly out of sight. They see the foam-crest on 
the wave, and picture an Atlantic Ocean of froth, 
and not the solemn sea that stands below in eter- 
nal equipoise. You turn to them the luminous 
crescent of your life, and they call it the whole 
round globe ; and so they love you with a love 
that is agate, not pearl, because what they love 
in you is something infinitely below the highest. 
They love you level : they have never scaled your 
heights nor fathomed your depths. And when 
they talk of you as familiarly as if they had taken 



302 COUNTRY LIVING. 

out your auricles and ventricles, and turned them 
inside out, and wrung them, and shaken them, — • 
when they prate of your transparency and open- 
ness, the abandonment with which you draw aside 
the curtain and reveal the inmost thoughts of your 
heart, — you, who are to yourself a miracle and a 
mystery, you smile inwardly, and are content. 
They are on the wrong scent, and you may pur- 
sue your plans in peace. They are indiscriminate 
and satisfied. They do not know the relation of 
what appears to what is. If they chance to skirt 
along the coasts of your Purple Island, it will be 
only chance, and they will not know it. You may 
close your portholes, lower your drawbi'idge, and 
make merry, for they will never come within gun- 
shot of the " Round Tower of your heart." 

There is no such thing as knowing a man in- 
timately. Every soul is, for the greater part 
of its mortal life, isolated from every other. 
Whether it dwell in the Garden of Eden or the 
Desert of Sahara, it dwells alone. Not only do 
we jostle against the street-crowd unknowing 
and unknown, but we go out and come in, 
we lie down and rise up, with strangers. (Jupi- 
ter and Neptune sweep the heavens not more 
unfamiliar to us than the worlds that circle our 
own hearth-stone. Day after day, and year after 
year, a person moves by your side ; he sits at 
the same table ; he reads the same books ; he 
kneels in the same church. You know every 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 303 

liair of his head, every trick of liis hps, every 
tone of his voice ; you can tell him far off by his 
gait. Without seeing him, you recognize his 
step, his knock, his laugh. "Know him? Yes, 
I have known him these twenty years." No, 
you don't know him. You know his gait, and 
hair, and voice. You know what preacher he 
hears, what ticket he voted, and what were his 
last year's expenses ; but you don't know him. 
He sits quietly in his chair, but he is in the 
temple. You speak to him ; his soul comes out 
into the vestibule to answer you, and returns, — 
and the gates are shut ; therein you cannot 
enter. You were discussing the state of the 
country ; but when you ceased, he opened a 
postern-gate, went down a bank, and launched 
on a sea over whose waters you have no boat 
to sail, no star to guide. You have loved and 
reverenced him. He has been your concrete of 
tiTith and nobleness. Unwittingly you touch a 
secret spring, and a Blue-Beai*d Chamber stands 
revealed. You give no sign ; you meet and part 
as usual ; but a Dead Sea rolls between you two 
forevermore.j 

It must De so. Not even to the nearest and 
dearest can one unveil the secret place whete 
his soul abideth, so that there shall be no more 
any winding ways or hidden chambers ; but to 
your indifferent neighbor, what blind alleys, and 
deep caverns, and inaccessible mountains ! To 



304 COUNTRY LIVING. 

liim who " touches the electric chain wherewith 
you 're darkly bound," your soul sends back an 
answering thrill. Our little window is opened, 
and there is short parley. Your ships speak 
each other now and then in welcome, though 
imperfect communication ; but immediately you 
strike out again into the great, shoreless sea, 
over which you must sail forever alone. You 
may shrink from the far-reaching solitudes of 
your heart, but no other foot than yours can 
tread them, save those 

" That, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed, 
For our advantage, to the bitter cross." 

Be thankful that it is so, — that only His eye 
sees whose hand formed. If we could look in, 
we should be appalled at the vision. The worlds 
that glide around us are mysteries too high for 
us. We cannot attain to them. The naked soul 
is a sight too awful for man to look at and live. 
There are individuals whose topography we would 
like to know a little better, and there is danger 
that we crash against each other while roaming 
around in the dark ; but, for all that, Avould we 
not have the Constitution broken up. Somebody 
says, " In heaven there will be no secrets," 
Which, it seems to me, would be intolerable. (If 
that were a revelation from the King of Heaven, 
of course I would not speak flippantly of it ; but 
though towards Heaven we look with reverence 
and humble hope, I do not know that Tom, 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 305 

Dick, and Harry's notions of it have any special 
claim to our respect.) Such publicity would de- 
stroy all individuality, and undermine the foun- 
dations of society. Clairvoyance — if there be 
any such thing — always seemed to me a stupid 
impertinence. When people pay visits to me, 
I wish them to come to the front-door, and ring 
the bell, and send up their names. I don't 
AA'ish them to climb in at the window, or creep 
througli the pantry, or, worst of all, float through 
the keyhole, and catch me in undress. So I be- 
lieve that in all worlds thoughts will be the sub- 
jects of volition, — more accurately expressed 
when expression is desired, but just as entirely 
suppressed when we will suppression. 

After all, perhaps the chief trouble arises from 
a prevalent confusion of ideas as to what consti- 
tutes a man your friend. Friendship may stand 
for that peaceful complacence which you feel 
towards all well-behaved people who wear clean 
collars and use tolerable grammar. This is a 
very good meaning, if everybody will subscribe 
to it. But sundry of these well-behaved people 
Avill mistake your civility and complacence for 
a recognition of special affinity, and proceed at 
once to frame an alliance offensive and defensive 
while the sun and the moon shall endure. O, 
the barnacles that cling to your keel in such 
waters ! The inevitable result is, that they win 
your intense rancor. You would feel a genial 



306 COUNTRY LIVING. 

kindliness towards them, if they would be satis- 
fied with that ; but they lay out to be your spe- 
cialty. They infer your innocent little inch to 
be the standard-bearer of twenty ells, and goad 
you to frenzy. I mean you, you desperate little 
horror, who nearly dethroned my reason six 
years ago ! I always meant to have my re- 
venge, and here I impale you before the public. 
For three months, you fastened yourself upon 
me, and I could not shake you off. What availed 
it me, that you were an honest and excellent 
man ? Did I not, twenty times a day, wish you 
had been a villain, who had insulted me, and I a 
Kentucky giant, that I might have the unspeak- 
able satisfaction of knocking you down ? But 
you added to your crimes virtue. Villany had 
no part or lot in you. You were a member of 
a church, in good and regular standing ; you had 
graduated with all the honors worth mentioning; 
you had not a sin, a vice, or a fault that I knew 
of; and you were so thoroughly good and re- 
pulsive that you were a great grief to me. Do 
you think, you dear, disinterested wretch, that I 
have forgotten how you were continually putting 
yourself to horrible inconveniences on my ac- 
count ? Do you think I am not now filled with 
remorse for the aversion that rooted itself in- 
eradicably in my soul, and which now gloats 
over you, as you stand in the pillory where my 
own hands have fastened you ? But can Nature 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 307 

be cruslied forever ? Did I not ruin my nerves, 
and seriously injure my temper, by the over- 
powering pressure I laid upon them to keep 
them quiet when you were by ? Could I not, 
by the sense of coming ill through all my quiv- 
ering frame, presage your advent as exactly as 
the barometer heralds the approaching storm ? 
Those three months of agony are little atoned for 
by this late vengeance ; but go in peace ! 

Mysterious are the ways of friendship. It is 
not a matter of reason or of choice, but of mag- 
netisms. You cannot always give the premises 
nor the ai'gument, but the conclusion is a pal- 
pable and stubborn fact. Abana and Pharpar 
may be broad, and deep, and blue, and grand ; 
but only in Jordan shall your soul wash and be 
clean. A thousand brooks are born of the sun- 
shine and the mountains : very, very few are 
they whose flow can mingle with yours, and not 
disturb, but only deepen and broaden the current. 

Your friend ! Who shall describe him, or 
worthily paint what he is to you ? No merchant, 
nor lawyer, nor farmer, nor statesman, claims 
your suffrage, but a kingly soul. He comes to 
you from God, — a prophet, a seer, a revealer. 
He has a clear vision. His love is reverence. 
He goes into the jjenetralia of your life, — not 
presumptuously, but with uncovered head, unsan- 
dalled feet, and pours libations at the innermost 
shrine. His incense is grateful. For him the 



308 COUNTRY LIVING. 

sunlight brightens, the skies grow rosy, and all 
the days are Junes. Wrapped in his love, you 
float in a delicious rest, rocked in the bosom of 
piirple, scented waves. Nameless melodies sing 
themselves through your heart. A golden glow 
suffuses your atmosphere. A vague, fine ecstasy 
thrills to the sources of life, and earth lays hold 
on heaven. Such friendship is worship. It ele- 
vates the most trifling services into rites. The 
humblest offices are sanctified. All things are 
baptized into a new name. Duty is lost in joy. 
Care veils itself in caresses. Drudgery becomes 
delight. There is no longer anything menial, 
small, or servile. All is transformed 

" Into something rich and strange." 

The homely household-ways lead through beds of 
spices and orchards of pomegranates. The daily 
toil among your parsnips and carrots is plucking 
May violets with the dew upon them to meet the 
eyes you love upon their first awaking. In the 
burden and heat of the day you hear the rustling 
of summer showers and the whispering of summer 
winds. Everything is lifted up from the plane of 
labor to the plane of love, and a glory spans your 
life. With your friend, speech and silence are 
one; for a communion mysterious and 'intangible 
reaches across from heart to heart. The many 
dig and delve in your nature with fruitless toil to 
find the spring of living water : he only raises his 



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS. 309 

wand, and, obedient to the hidden power, it bends 
at onoe to your secret. Your friendship, though 
independent of language, gives to it life and light. 
The mystic spirit stirs even in commonplaces, and 
the merest question is an endearment. ' You are 
quiet because your heart is over-full. You talk 
because it is pleasant, not because you have any- 
thing to say. You weary of terms that are already 
love-laden, and you go out into the highways and 
hedges, and gather up the rough, wild, wilful 
words, heavy with the hatreds of men, and fill 
them to the brim with honey-dew. All things 
great and small, grand or humble, you press into 
your service, force them to do soldier's duty, and 
your banner over them is love.j 

With such a friendship, presence alone is happi- 
ness ; nor is absence wholly void, — for memoi4es, 
and hopes, and pleasing fancies, sparkle through 
the hours, and you know the sunshine will come 
back. 

For such friendship one is grateful. No matter 
that it comes unsought, and comes not for the 
seeking. You do not discuss the reasonableness 
of your gratitude. You only know that your 
whole being bow^s with humility and utter thank- 
fulness to him who thus crowns you monarch of 
all realms. 

And the kingdom is everlasting. A weak love 
dies weakly Avith the occasion that gave it birth ; 
but such friendship is born of the gods, and im- 



310 COUNTRY LIVING. 

mortal. Clouds and darkness may sweep aromid 
it, but within the cloud the glory lives undijnmed. 
Death has no power over it. Time cannot dimin- 
ish, nor even dishonor annul it. Its direction may 
have been earthly, but itself is divine. You go 
back into your solitudes : all is silent as aforetime, 
but you cannot forget that a Voice once resounded 
there. A Presence filled the valleys and gilded 
the mountain-tops, — breathed upon the plains, and 
they sprang up in lilies and roses, — flashed upon 
the waters, and they flowed to spheral melody, — 
swept through the forests, and they, too, trembled 
into soncT. And though now the warmth has 
faded out, though the ruddy tints and amber clear- 
ness have paled to ashen hues, though the mur- 
muring melodies ai'e dead, and forest, vale, and hill 
look hard and angular in the sharp air, you know 
that it is not death. The fire is unquenched 
beneath. You go your way not disconso- 
late. There needs but the Victorious 
Voice. At the touch of the 
Prince's lips, life shall rise 
again and be perfected 
forevermore. 



Dog-Days. 




f OUBTLESS they have their uses, but 
they are not agreeable. That must 
be conceded. There is no out-doors. 
>^i'^^ You Avake in the morning with a mild 
sense of strangulation, though all your windows 
are open at top and bottom. You thrust your 
head out into the morning air, but there is n't any. 
It has all run to fog./ Fog lies heavy and gray 
on the grass. Trees and hills and fences are 
smothered in fog. It creeps into your house, tar- 
nishes all your gilt, swells your drawers and doors 
so that you can't open them, and when you have 
opened them you can't shut them. It breathes 
upon your muslin curtains, and they turn into 
limpsy strings. It steals into your closet, and 
little blue specks and white feathery spots appear 
on your pies. A pungent taste develops itself in 
your pound-cake. The stray cup-custard filched 
from the general larder for private circulation is a 
keen and acid disappointment. Milk refuses to 
curdle into cheese, and cream will tumble about 



312 COUNTRY LIVING. 

in your churn for hours, and. come out mitigated 
buttermilk at last, j 

Flies are rampant. If the cover is left off the 
sugar-bowl, a colony of flies take immediate pos- 
session. If yovir bare arm happens to be carrying 
a vase of flowers with special care, a fly lights on 
your elbow, and proceeds by short and easy stages 
(to him) to your wrist. If you are writing, a 
horde of flies institute an investigation of your 
head and hands, with a special commission for 
,your nose. You brush them ofi\, and they only 
rub their fore legs together, bob their heads, brush 
down their wings, and go at it again. Your 
kitchen ceiling looks like huckleberries and milk. 
All the while it is very warm, but not so warm as 
it is sticky, only the stickiness is all on the out- 
side. Within, you feel a constant tendency to fall 
to pieces, because there is n't brace enough in the 
air to hold you together. If we were English, we 
should say it was nasty weather. Being Ameri- 
cans, we only sigh, " Dog-days ! " 

But they must have their uses. Everything is 
good for something. Let us see. First, they are 
excellent for the complexion, — a matter in which, 
whatever we say, we are all more or less interest- 
ed. Bile-y, jaundice-y, sallow faces clear up into 
healthy tints. Freckles " try out." Pale cheeks 
tone up into delicate rose, and dry, parched, burn- 
ing flushes tone down into a cool liquescence. All 
the pores are opened, and the whole system Ian- 



DOG-DAYS. 313 

guislies in a pleasant helplessness, — pleasant, if 
one has been so industrious all the year, that he 
can afford to be idle during the dog-days. 

Dog-days are good as tests. Their effect on 
curl-paper curls is melancholy, but natural curls 
laugh them to scorn, and riot In twistinops. Just 
so the temper. /Placidity at Christmas often dis- 
solves in an August fog. What you thought was 
amiability, may have been only oxygen. If you 
Avish to see whether your temper can really bear 
the strains of wind and weather, just remember 
how you went to the middle drawer in your 
bureau for gloves, fearing you should be too late 
for the cars, — liow the drawer would only come 
out by hitches, first one side, then the other, and 
then not at all, — how you thrust in your hand up 
to the wrist, and could just not reach the gloves 
with the end of your longest finger, while your 
wrist was tortured by the sharp edge of the drawer 
on one side, and the sharp edge of the bureau on 
the other. Did you possess your soul in pa- 
tience ? When a shower came suddenly pelting 
down through the fog, and you tried to close the 
window, and got yourself wet through for your 
pains, and could n't move it an inch for all your 
shaking and pounding, — when you put your 
cake into the oven to " scald," and forgot it, till 
a sense of something burning travelled up-stairs 
to stir your passivity, and you imshed down to 
snatch too late a burnt and blackened loaf, — did 

14 



314 COUNTRY LIVING. 

you remember the first three words of Psalm 
xxxvii. 1 ? ) 

In the cahii complacency of a balmy spring 
morning, we look clown with a serene smile on the 
follies of the world. We assume a calm and quiet 
superiority, give it a pat on the shoulder, and say, 
condescendingly : " Yes, you will do very well ; a 
little rickety in the joints ; a slight softening of the 
brain ; but very passable for your age." Nothing 
can exceed our amiability when we are pleased 
and comfortable ; but, floundering up to the neck 
in July, keeping the breath of life in us only by 
becoming amphibious and web-footed, bound to 
the earth by no stronger tie than ice-cream and 
sherbet, wooing to our side every passing breeze, 
as if it were the king's daughter, — then, a beflow- 
ered, bespangled, bedizened abomination, coming 
betwixt the wind and our nobility, is the spear 
of Ithuriel to our smiling good-nature, and we feel 
disposed to pluck its eyes out with a demoniac 
delight. 

Dog-days can teach us trust. You have heard 
of the woman who, when her horse ran away, 
trusted to Providence till the breeching broke. 
A good deal of our trust is like this. We call it 
Providence, but it is really breeching. Not that 
breeching is not a very good thing to trust to as 
far as it goes, — only it is not Providence. So, 
when our doors can be bolted and locked, we lie 
down in peace and sleep ; but when they Avon't go 



DOG-DAYS. 315 

)')to, and we have to make a precarious arrangement 
^ ' of sticks and strings, we feel more keenly that we 
awake because the Lord sustained us. 

Dog-days are friendly to greenness. Our lawns 
smile with velvet verdure. The fog goes into the 
soil and wraps it around the tender strawberry- 
vines that we have just transplanted, and in soft 
swaddling-clothes the young fruit will slumber till 
next summer's sun shall bid it leap to luxuriant 
life, and a creamy and glorious death. Down into 
the heart of the sweet-pea, deep into the cup of 
the morning-glory, steals the kindly mist, and a 
pink and purple splendor crowns the rising day. 
The cucumber swells its prickly sides and snuffs 
the coming vinegar. The squash-vine creeps along 
the ground, sorrowing that it has all turned to 
pumpkin, but catching from the moist air a deeper 
shade for the generous gold of its blossom. Ah ! 
in the laboratories of nature the fog has a great 
work to do. 

But the best of dog-days is their departing. 
Grateful for the returning sun, and the sweet 
west wind, we see a deeper blue in the sky, and 
a denser green in the fields. The tall corn waves 
with statelier grace. The trees are fretted with 
fresh-springing life. The earth is a billowy and 
dimpled emerald, tender and smiling ; but the sky 
— the ever-shifting sky — is an absorbing and per- 
petual joy. Sometimes its sweep of stainless blue 
is glorious afar. Then the dving sun leaves its 



316 COUNTRY LIVING. 

legacy in the west, of saffron, and amber, and 
pale green. Now the clouds sail out white and 
warm into the central blue, or rush exultant, 
whirling up masses of lavender rimmed with gold, 
or shoot from the glowing west spires of rosy 
pink, or mount to the zenith in delicate shells of 
pearl, or lie above the horizon, passionate, breath- 
less, and ruddy, floating in seas of fire. Anon 
they group themselves in all tricksy shapes. A 
turreted castle sends down shafts of light from its 
pearly gates. The mailed warrior places liis lance 
in rest, and a couchant lion 

" Scatters across the sunset air 
The golden radiance of his hair." 

" Cloud-land ! Gorgeous land ! " All grace of 
outline, all wealth of color, are gathered there. 
Tropical splendor and heavenly purity kiss each 
other, and the angels of God can almost be seen 
ascendino; and descending. 

So gazino; with thankful and reverent hearts, 
we remember that great city, the holy Jerusalem, 
descending out of heaven from God, whose light is 
like unto a stone most precious, for the glory of God 
doth lio;hten it, and the Lamb is the lio;ht thereof. 

So, when the west winds come laden with fra- 
grance from the prairies, and the cold winds blow 
down from the north, bearing us healing and 
strength, we will gird up our loins anew to the 
work of tlie Lord of light, contented to rest and 
stand in our lot at the end of the days. 



Summer Gone. 




HOPE, a throb, a memory, — that is 
summer in these high latitudes. The 
sorrow of her going follows close upon 
the jubilee of her welcome. The lips 
that part to ring out her joyous " Salve ! " close, 
white and tremulous, upon her thrice-wailed 
" Vale ! " The same breath wafts her Hail ! and 
Farewell ! 

But be not cast down, O my soul, nor disquiet- 
ed within me. The beauty that budded with the 
opening spring is not yet gone, though autumn 
winds wail, and chilly nights pi'ophesy dismantled 
Avoods. That beauty will be a joy forever. No 
time, no tyranny, can rob me of the riches which 
the summer brought. Wherever I go, my walls 
will be always spread with .pictures that no artist 
can rival. I haA^e but to close my eyes, and the 
hill-sides whiten with Innocence once more. I see 
again that strange, hardy, frail-looking thing, with 
the soft, delicate, liquescent " feel " of a month- 
old baby, yet popping up its audacious little head 



318 COUNTRY LIVING. 

close upon the heels of the departing snow. De- 
fiant of frost, and storm, and wmd, — tremulous, 
mellow, luscious, — yet pure, and sweet, and 
saintly, it meets me everywhere. On the very 
top of the hill, where the moss is only a brown 
crisp in the sun, a little clump of white richness 
sways in the scented air. I put aside the dark, 
dense grass under the apple-trees, down in the 
moist meadow-land, and it laughs up at me with 
joyful recognition. Sometimes it takes on a deep, 
creamy white ; sometimes it is tinted Avith pearl, 
or lavender, or pale violet deepening at the border 
into a purple rim, but always spreading purest 
white around the centre, where, in a silver pal- 
ace, the baby-prince lies sleeping, crowned with a 
golden crown. 

Here in my quiet room, with the curtains drawn 
and the red fire-light settino; the room ao;low, I 
gather them once more into a swelling wave of 
white loveliness, circled with deep green moss or 
the royal purple of pansies. I do not mingle them 
with other flowers, because I think it destroys their 
individuality. They look crowded, and uncom- 
fortable, and overlooked, but by themselves they 
are the sweetest, happiest little company in the 
world. Their talk is of the floating of angel-gar- 
ments, the fathomless depths of mothers' hearts, 
and the souls of little children that went to God 
unstained. They are like fluttering memories of 
some sweet, strange sphere long ago, and they 



SUMMER GONE. 319 

murmur rare melodies if you but leau your heart 
close and listen. 

Side by side with tlie Innocence, the purple vio- 
let rears its slender stalk and bends its swan-like 
neck with a queenly condescension. This is an 
age of iconoclasm. Dr. Livingstone has demol- 
ished the traditional valor of the lion, and Al- 
phonse Karr makes count that the violet is one of 
the most ambitious and aspiring of flowers. I 
marvel, however, that it needed Alphonse Karr to 
show us that the violet is not modest. I do not 
mean that it is m-modest, — far from it ; but only 
that in looking at it, modesty, humility, do not 
seem to be its prevailing or most striking char- 
acteristic. I should rather say it was stateliness. 
Innocence, which has never been accused of mod- 
esty, to my knowledge, conveys to me a far 
stronger impression of it. It springs up with a 
light, unconscious air, as if it were not thinking 
about itself at all, — peeping and peering into the 
great mystery of sun and sky with an investigat- 
ing, curious, wide-awake, humble look, as if quite 
aware that it was an ignorant little good-for-noth- 
ing of a flower, but would thankfully receive infor- 
mation from any quarter on any subject. Not so 
the violet. It does not shoot up like the Inno- 
cence with any definite object in view, but rather 
glides deliberately, having decided that, on the 
whole, it may as Avell dispose of its elegant leisure 
in that as in any way, and once up, it seems to 



320 COUNTRY LIVING. 

take a comprehensive survey of the universe, con- 
cludes that nothing therein is especially worthy of 
its august notice, and then — does n't droop its 
head as many people persist in asserting, though, 
if you will but notice its two winged petals ex- 
panding laterally from a certain inward prompt- 
ing, and the two upper ones flung spiritedly back 
and curling over, you will see that there is no 
more droop to it than there is to a — I don't think 
of anything to finish my comparison with, so it 
must hang as it is — and then, as I was saying, it 
bows its stately head as a queen miglit to a chim- 
ney-sweeper who raises his tattered cap as she 
rides past. 

It is true that the violet does seem to delight in 
obscure, out-of-the-way places, " half hidden from 
the eye " ; for though it does sometimes appear in 
the open fields, it is shorn of its glory, — a pale, 
spiritless thing, afraid of its own shadow, and 
clinging so timorously to its mother Earth that 
you can hardly find it in your heart to stoop and 
pluck it thence ; while, if you chance to leap over 
an old, tumbling-down stone wall, you will see 
hosts of them rising on the other side, with tall, 
juicy stems, and deep, rich petals, fearless and 
free. In my stroll one morning, I came unex- 
pectedly upon a bed of — I beg everybody's par- 
don, but I never heard it called' anything but 
" skunk-cabbage." It was in a low, swampy ra- 
vine, and I was turning vigorously away, when 



SUMMER GONE. 321 

the sudden twinkling of flowers beckoned me 
forward. Treading very insecurely among the 
mushy hassocks, and thrusting aside the uncouth 
leaves, lo ! a great army of violets rollicking under 
their odorous shade, in all the intensest passionate 
purple of tropical luxuriance. Strange ! They 
love the sunshine. It nourishes their strength 
and beauty. Grace of form and wealth of color 
come to them from its beneficence. They would 
fade and die without it, yet they hide from it. 
They pale in it. They keep their richest bloom 
for dark shady dells, where sunshine only drips 
through lazily. It is no coquettish teasing, but a 
real shyness, — not the petty tyranny of a weak 
vanity, but the shrinking of a true heart, a-trem- 
ble in the grasp of its own passion, hiding invol- 
untarily, in silence and solitude, from the love that 
has evoked it, and that glows, and flames, and 
dazzles in lambent embrace around it, yet in voice- 
less solitude feeding on nothing else than the full- 
ness of that very love, drinking in its sweetness, 
softening down the brilliancy to its own white 
lustre, and filling up the springs of life with an 
inward and unspeakable joy. 

Still the place does not make, though it often 
does reveal, the man. Let many a one who 
passed in his cottage for a quiet, sensible, well- 
bred person be raised suddenly to a palace ; or, 
since, notwithstanding the newspapers, we don't 
have palaces in this country, say a five-story, 
14* n 



322 COUNTRY LIVING. 

brown-stone front, with income to match, and his 
innate vulgarity crops out. Or vice versa., the 
large-hearted, hospitable master of the aforesaid 
palace, falsely so called, coming suddenly to grief 
and a pittance per annum, is transformed into a 
fretful, jealous, petty, and pitiful soul. The springs 
of his generosity lay in his pocket, not in his heart. 
His bank-book, not himself, made him a gentle- 
man. A little, fat, good-natured woman is not 
majestic because she dons a diadem ; nor was 
Godiva ever more a queen than when she swept 
down the turret stairs, clad only in her loveliness. 
Circumstances may veil or obscure for a time, but 
cannot prematurely hide, — 

" May cloud the soul with shadows, but may not 
Its glory blot." 

Pomp disguises meanness, and poverty shackles 
grandeur ; but sooner or later the heaven-lit flame 
plays around the brow of the true prince, and 
reveals his royal birth, — whether it be Havelok 
in the fisherman's hut, or lulus in burning Troy. 

So, little violets, wax pallid on the hill-tops if 
you will, and shun the garish day. Nestle under 
the shadows of gray old rocks, and verdurous, 
large-leaved plantain. I know you. In your self- 
sought solitude your royal blood reveals itself By 
your amethystine locks, by your incense-breathing 
vestments, by your princely port and mien, I read 
your noble lineage. Your kinghood stands con- 
fessed. 



SUMMER GONE. 323 

Still with closed eyes I see thousands of dande- 
lions gleaming sun-ward. All the highways and 
by-ways are mottled with their generous gold. 
Dust cannot choke them, — can scarcely dim their 
shining. On the warmest summer noon, place 
one against your cheek, and it has the same cool, 
soft, fresh feeling. Little curling tendrils nestle 
lovingly among the petals. Young eyes untrained 
to minute uses are attracted by their unblinking 
gaze, and dimpled hands pluck at them with ill- 
aimed eagerness, and hold them in unsteady grasp. 
Obedient to " waxen touches," their satin-smooth 
stems curl in involute circles, adorning child-brows 
with fantastic grace, or link themselves in tremu- 
lous chains about little white throats. When their 
yellow disks round into nebulous globes of pale, 
feathery softness, merry hands clutch them afresh, 
and puckered red lips and puffed cheeks send out 
as strong a blast as juvenile lungs can furnish ; 
because, you know, if you can blow away the 
down with one breath, it is a sure sign that " your 
mother wants you " ! Happy little lion-toothed 
flower, with nothing of the lion but the tooth, and 
with neither the power nor the wish to use that, — 
woven in with the unconscious sunshine of child- 
hood, with the memories of continual spring-time, 
and innocence, and blissful ignorance, — the bless- 
ing of all baby-life be upon you ! Never cease to 
fringe the dusty road with sunlit smiles, — a boon 
and a benediction alike to the infant and to him 
that is an hundred years old. 



324 COUNTRY LIVING. 

All the knolls are studded with star-flower, 
but you must go down on your knees to see it, 
and gather with painful care, one by one, if you 
gather at all. I should let them be. They look 
pretty where they are, sprinkling the somewhat 
bare slope with a crystalline delicacy, and their 
leaves have an elaborate, clear-cut beauty ; but 
they do not make much figure in a — must I 
say bouquet ? O that the old English nosegay 
might be reinstated in its ancient dignity, and the 
stiff, foreign, unmeaning, wrong-meaning, cut- 
and-dried bouquet ousted from the throne where 
its presence is a perpetual usui'pation ! It never 
will be naturalized, and never is natural. We 
don't know how to pronounce it ; we don't know 
how to spell it ; and if any of us do happen to 
know, the printer does n't, and he goes straight- 
way and spells it wrong. Let us have the nose- 
gay, brimful of rich old meanings, replete with 
associations ; and reserve the foreign word for 
the only thing which it fits, — namely, the round, 
stiff, hard, close-clipped, tightly-squeezed horror 
that comes from the hand of professional hot- 
house men, — solid enough to knock you down, 
if fired with sufficient force, and so ugly that 
you are divided between pity for the poor little 
things forced into such unnatural contiguity, — 
divested of the green which relieved their bril- 
liancy from the charge of gaudiness, and laced 
into a hideous regularity, — and wrath against the 



SUMMER GONE. 325 

man who has so misused his eyes and hands as 
not to be able to construct any better imitation 
of the viny, spray ey, feathery, airy, slender, 
pendulous lightness, winsomeness, and grace of 
nature than that artificial knob. Call that a 
bouquet, and with merciful hands rend off its 
swaddling-clothes, tone down its rainbow hues 
with all tints of green, from the pale tenderness 
that springs up on the sunny, sheltered side of 
the Avood, to the deep luxuriance that lurks in 
its unsunned and unstirred heart, and make of it 
twenty nosegays, whose colors shall delight, and 
whose odors shall intoxicate ; in which nosegays, 
as I have said, my little star-flowers would make 
but a poor figure. Their stems are so short, that it 
is difficult to group them with any effect. Their 
tiny faces become quite hidden behind their stur- 
dier kinsmen. But in their own haunts they lead a 
quiet, noiseless life, which well repays an observer. 
If you went away to foreign lands when you 
were young, and your knowledge of buttercups 
is only a childish memory hanging on an obscure 
peg in some inner chamber of your brain, you 
will very likely — as I did — look upon the first 
star-flowers that you see as juvenile buttercups, 
— just as children invariably suppose mice to be 
young rats, and rats adult mice ; and though you 
have a vague, half-unconscious feeling that those 
wee things do not quite satisfy your sense of but- 
tercups, you will attribute it to the difference 



326 COUNTRY LIVING. 

between tlie eyes of cliildhood and of maturity. 
" Years dwarf so many of our grandeurs, and dim 
so many of our lustres ! " you will begin to sigh. 
Don't. It 's no such thing. Wait awhile, just 
a few days, and — whence comes that shining ? 
Is it the twinkling of a star-flower? Not a bit. 
It is the gleam of knightly armor. It is the 
glitter of burnished gold. There stands the real 
buttercup. Does it pale before your young 
memories ? Your memories were, on the con- 
trary, but a faint herald of its splendor. Yon 
little star-flowers might grow for an age of sum- 
mers, and never attain such form and comeliness. 
Their timid, delicate, soft sweetness is to the 
defiant, glittering, manly beauty of buttercups 

" As moonlight unto sunlight, or as water unto wine." 

Think of the merry scorn with which, hiding in 
the grass, they must have heard your mournful 
musing on their short-comings ; and the sturdy 
self-confidence with which they bided their time. 
No wonder they toss their heads a little saucily 
as you pass by, and nod and wink at each other 
in ill-concealed jubilee over your undisguised ad- 
miration. One idea concerning them, however, I 
have discarded, — my belief in the traditional test- 
ship. In fact, now that I am grown up and ovit 
of harm's way, I will say that I never did believe 
it. I think if you hold a buttercup under ariy- 
bodi/^s chin, near enough, his chin will turn yel- 



SUMMER GONE. 327 

low, and it is no sign at all that he is inordi- 
nately fond of butter. But when I was little, I 
was not as bold as an eagle, and often waived, 
or at least suppressed, my convictions, for the 
sake of being let alone. Moreover, I was con- 
scious of a weakness in the direction indicated 
by the buttercups ; so I suffered them to be 
brought in confirmation strong, and only smiled 
in outward acquiescence, but with inward pro- 
test. I am older now, and have learned that 
Paul's order of sequence is best, — first pure, 
tlien peaceable ; that peace is not so precious a 
treasure as to be bought at any price ; that, in 
fact, it is a curse 

" Till the Might with the Right and the Truth shall be." 

" Better war, loud war by land and by sea, 
War with a thousand battles and shaking a hundred thrones." 

Nay, so fearful, so deceitful, so dangerous, is the 
calm of a stagnant peace, — a peace that scums 
the pool in whose foul depths lurk dishonesty 
and oppression and cowardice, lust and rapine 
and murder, — that I rather feel 

" 'T is better to have fought and lost, 
Than never to have fought at all." 

The anemones have passed into my heart for- 
ever. Their reign was short, but they bloomed 
in beautiful profusion. Almost before I thought 
of looking for them, I found a clump two feet in 
diameter on the edge of a swamp where I least 
expected to find any. I don't suppose a soul had 



328 COUNTRY LIVING. 

seen them but myself, — a soul in a mortal body, I 
mean, — for I dare say many of the shining ones had 
looked upon it, and lent perhaps some ray of white- 
ness to its pure garments ; but there in their shel- 
tered nook, unseen, unknown, they revelled in sun- 
ny, exuberant life, every petal springing back with 
joyous eagerness. It seemed as if they gladdened 
at sight of me, — as if they wanted mortal eyes 
to be refreshed with a glimpse of their overflowing 
happiness ; and the breath of the soft morning — 
a June morning dropped into the stormy lap of 
March — that gently swayed their pliant stems, 
seemed to intone a song of peace on earth, good- 
will toward men. I think they are very human. 
Perhaps it is because we associate them with 
those 

" Who in their youthful beauty died." 

Gazing upon their exquisite tracery, we see once 
more the blue-veined loveliness that grew so deep 
into our hearts, but vanished from our aching 
eyes long ago, — the first little baby-daughter, who 
learned only in heaven how dear she was on 
earth ; the sister who fell asleep while the dew 
of life was yet fresh on her brow ; the young wife 
who glided ogat of the arms, strong but utterly 
poM'-erless, that would have held her forever ; the 
young mother who could have found her angel- 
garments scarcely whiter than the robes of her 
sacred motherhood ; — so, with tear-dimmed eyes, 
we press the anemones to our white lips, and bless 



SUMMER GONE. 329 

the memories, sad, yet passing sweet, which they 
awaken. Tliere is a pain whicli is better and 
liigher and holier than pleasure. Since that morn- 
ino- I have seen many anemones springing np from 
their warm bed of dry leaves which the foil frosts 
scattered and the fall winds spread, and where, 
safe as in the hollow of His hand who metes out 
heaven with a span, they slept to a glad resurrec- 
tion ; but none came so near me, none so took 
hold of my strength, as the stray little cluster 
that awoke first in the embrace of the sun on the 
edge of that Dismal Swamp. 

Faerily, daintily, tricksily, they troop around 
me now, — the sun-born, gala-robed sprites. Ad- 
vancing, receding, bending their lithe forms in 
aii'y dances to the music of vocal brooks, rocking 
dreamily back and forth in the lap of soft south 
gales, surging into my soul, but mocking my 
yearning arms, now pensive with dewy tears, 
now laughing softly to little, cooling showers, now 
drunken with the fierce wine of the northwest 
wind, they circle me in elfin ring. The wild col- 
umbine flings out his scarlet banner, but gives me 
no Open Sesame to the vaults where his nectared 
honey is stored. The gay geranium leaps from 
his lurking-place beneath the maple-trees, but 
I have no charm to bid him stay. The tawny 
wood-lily glares sylvan rage, and will not be 
soothed by my caresses, but his white-bosomed 
sister in the valley pours crisp coolness from her 



330 COUNTRY LIVING. 

crystal cups, and whispers of rippling waters, and 
golden sunshine glinting down the greenwood. 
The spirasas rise before me still and stately ; the 
vervain shoots at me his slender arrows, purple- 
tipped ; the honeysuckle vies with the sweet-brier 
to flood me with heavenly odors ; and the garden 
of God is my perpetual heritage. 

" We all do fade as a leaf." The sad voice 
whispers through my soul, and a shiver creeps 
over from the churchyard. " How does a leaf 
fade ? " It is a deeper, richer, stronger voice, with 
a ring and an echo in it, and the shiver levels 
into peace. I go out upon the October hills and 
question the Genii of the woods. " How does a 
leaf fade?" Grandly, magnificently, imperially, 
so that the glory of its coming is eclipsed by the 
glory of its departing ; — thus the forests make 
answer to-day. The tender bud of April opens its 
bosom to the wooing sun. From the soft airs of 
May and the clear sky of June it gathers green- 
ness and strenoth. Through all the summer its 
manifold lips are opened to every passing breeze, 
and great draughts of health course through its 
delicate veins, and meander down to the sturdy 
bark, the busy sap, the tiny flower, and the ma- 
turing fruit, bearing life to the present, and treas- 
uring up promise for the future. 

Then its work is done, and it goes to its burial, 
— not mournfully, not reluctantly, but joyously, 



SUMMER GONE. 331 

as to a festival. Its grave-clothes wear no fune- 
real look. It robes itself in splendor. Solomon 
in all liis glory was not arrayed like one of these. 
First there is a flash of crimson in the low lands, 
then a glimmer of yellow on the hill-side, then, 
rushing on, exultant, reckless, rioting in color, 
grove vies with grove, till the woods are all aflame. 
Here the sunlight streams through the pale gold 
tresses of the maple, serene and spiritual, like the 
aureole of a saint ; there it lingers in bold dalli- 
ance with the dusky orange of the walnut. The 
fierce heart of the tropics beats in the blood-red 
branches that surge against deep solemn walls 
of cypress and juniper. Yonder, a sober, but not 
sombre, russet tones down the flaunting vermilion. 
The intense glow of scarlet struggles for suprem- 
acy with the quiet sedateness of brown, and the 
numberless tints of year-long green come in every- 
where to enliven, and soothe, and subdue, and 
harmonize. So the leaf fades, — brilliant, gor- 
geous, gay, rejoicing, — as a bride adorned for her 
husband, as a king goes to his coronation. 

But the frosts come wdiiter and whiter. The 
nio-hts grow longer and longer. Ice glitters in the 
morning light, and the clouds shiver with snow. 
The forests lose their flush. The hectic dies into 
sere. Tlie little leaf can no longer breathe the 
strength-giving air, nor feel juicy life stirring in its 
veins. Fainter and fainter grows its hold upon 
the protecting tree. A strong wind comes and 



332 COUNTRY LIVING. 

loosens its last clasp, and bears it tenderly to earth. 
A whirl, an eddy, a rustle, and all is over, — no, 
not all, its work is not yet done. It sinks upon 
the protecting earth, and, Antaeus-like, gathers 
strength from the touch, and begins a new life. It 
joins hands with myriads of its mates, and takes 
up again its work of benevolence. No longer sen- 
sitive itself to frosts and snows, it wraps in its 
warm bosom the frail little anemones, and the 
delicate spring beauties, that can scarcely bide the 
rigors of our pitiless winters, and, nestling close 
in that fond embrace, they sleep securely till the 
spring sun wakens them to the smile of blue skies, 
and the song of dancing brooks. Deeper into the 
earth go the happy leaves, mingling with the moist 
soil, drinking the gentle dews, cradling a thousand 
tender lives in theirs, and springing again in new 
forms, — an eternal cycle of life and death " for- 
ever spent, renewed forever." 

We all do fade as a leaf. Change, thank God, 
is the essence of life. " Passing away " is written 
on all things ; and passing away is passing on 
from strength to strength, from glory to glory. 
Spring has its growth, summer its fruitage, and 
autumn its festive in-gathering. The spring of 
eager preparation waxes into the summer of noble 
work ; mellowing, in its turn, into the serene au- 
tumn, the golden-brown haze of October, when 
the soul may robe itself in jubilant drapery, 
awaiting the welcome command, " Come up 



SUMMER GONE. 333 

higher," where mortahty shall be swallowed up 
iu lite. 

Why, then, should autumn tinge our thoughts 
Avith sadness ? We fade as the leaf, and the leaf 
fades only to revivify. Though it fall, it shall rise 
again. Does the bud fear to become a blossom, or 
the blossom shudder as it swells into fruit, and 
shall the redeemed weep that they must become 
glorified ? Strange inconsistency. We faint with 
the burden and heat of the day. We bow down 
under the crosses that are laid upon our shoulders. 
We are bruised and torn by the snares and pitfalls 
which beset our way, and into which our unwary 
feet often fall. We are famished, and foot-sore, 
and travel-stained from our long journey, and yet 
we are saddened by tokens that we shall pass 
away from all these. Away from sin and sorrow, 
from temptation and fall, from disappointment and 
weary waiting, and a fearful looking for of evil, to 
purity and holiness, and the full fruition of every 
hope, — bliss which eye hath not seen, nor ear 
heard, nor heart conceived, — to a world whence 
all that made this dreary is forever banished, and 
where all that made this delightful is forever re- 
newed and increased, — a world where the activ- 
ities and energies of the soul shall have full scope, 
and love and recognition wait upon its steps for- 
ever. 

Let him alone fear who does not fade as the 
leaf, — him whose sources are not in God, and 



334 COUNTRY LIVING. 

who does not draw his Hfe thence, — him whose 
spring is gathering no strength, whose summer is 
maturing no fruit, and whose autumn shall have 
no vintage. Is not this the real sorrow of us all ? 
not a dread of change, but a secret consciousness 
of wasted power, — of disloyalty to God as the 
supreme object of our love and service ? Yet even 
here the fading leaf brings hope. Our future is 
always before us. The past is fixed. No tears 
can wash away its facts. Let us waste no vain 
regrets upon it, but, from the wisdom which its 
very mistakes and sins have bequeathed us, start 
afresh on the race. Though yesterday we were 
weak, and selfish, and indolent, let us to-day, at 
this moment, begin to be strong, and brave, and 
helpful, and just, and generous, and considerate, 
and tender, and truthful, and pure, and patient, 
and forcvivino;. " Now " is a glorious word. 
" Henceforth " is always within our grasp. 

" 0, my soul, look not behind thee. Thou hast work to do at last: 
Let the brave toil of the Present overarch the crumbling Past. 
Build thy great acts high and higher, build them in the conquered 

sod, 
Where thy weakness first fell bleeding, where thy first prayer rose 

to God." 




Winter. 




OME people have a way, you probably, 
my dear friend, among tlie rest, of 
going into the country. When the 
sun beats down hot and hard, when 
the earth gets parched and arid, when the fields 
have gone gray for lack of rain, and all the little 
leaves have curled themselves to dry death, and 
the heavens are dull, shimmering brass, and the 
roads are ankle-deep in fine, powdery dust, and 
the thirsty oxen stand panting in muddy bogs that 
were once pools of water, and the grasshopper has 
become a burden, and your desire for everything 
but ice-water has failed, — then you wrap the 
chairs in brown holland, turn the pictures to the 
wall, carry the silver down to the bank, pack a 
dry-goods store into your trunk, leave your cool, 
blinded, shaded city house with its large rooms, its 
ample baths, and its attentive well-trained servants, 
join a great dusty caravan, in a little dusty, cin- 
dery, clamorous railroad-car, whirl off to a great 
hotel, pitch about among hackmen and porters till 



336 COUNTRY LIVING. 

you have ensconced yourself somewhere in a seven 
by nine room, with the clatter of a legion of feet 
continually above, around, beneath, and the pro- 
longed torture of a gong forever summoning you 
to the two-hundredth part of a table, when you 
unpack your dry goods, and put on your flounces 
and laces and diamonds, and sit up straight, grace- 
ftil, and lady-like, and dine off" the same meats, 
and hop with the same hoppers, and talk with the 
same talkers, and see the same faces, and do the 
same things you did yesterday at home ; and this 
you call " going into the country." 

Or, being a notch lower in the social scale, and 
not able to contribute your part to the splendors 
of a great establishment, you go to a little village, 
eight miles away, and engage a southwest cham- 
ber in a house set on a hill, without blinds, with a 
tank of rain-water directly under the window, a 
feather bed, wooden chairs, and red-flowered car- 
pet, where you slumber out your mornings, simmer 
out your middays, and fight out your nights with 
mosquitos, — to all of which I have not the slightest 
objection — if you like it. It is change, and that, 
after all, is what you need ; and even if you have 
jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, it will 
serve to make the frying-pan more tolerable when 
you go back to it. But if, having done this, you 
consider that you have been in the country, that 
you have exhausted nature, and that there is noth- 
ing new under the sun for you to see, Avhy, I must 



WINTER. 337 

take the liberty of respectfully informing you that 
you don't know what you are talking about. 

Nature is very exacting. You may make her a 
flying visit in August, and she will indeed unfold 
to you the beauties of dew-drop, and thunder- 
shower, and evening sky ; but to know her in her 
wholeness, to drink in full measure the " life that 
hides in marsh and wold," to conceive all her 
magnificent possibilities, you must woo her from 
New Year to New Year, and every New Year 
shall bring you a fairer picture, a richer blessing, 
than the last. 

You shall look out upon a gray, frozen earth, 
and a gray, chilling sky. The trees stretch forth 
naked branches imploringly. The air pinches and 
pierces you, a homesick desolation clasps around 
your shivering, shrinking heart, and then God 
works a miracle. The windows of heaven are 
opened, and there comes forth a blessing. The 
gray sky unlocks her treasures, and softness and 
whiteness and warmth and beauty float gently 
down upon the evil and the good. Through all 
the long night, while you sleep, the work goes 
noiselessly on. Earth puts off her earthliness, and 
when the morning comes she stands before you in 
the white robes of a saint. The sun hallows her 
with baptismal touch, and she is glorified. There 
is no longer on her pure brow anything common 
or unclean. The Lord God hath wrapped her 
about with light as with a garment. His Divine 
15 V 



338 COUNTRY LIVING. 

chanty liath covered the multitude of her sins, 
and there is no scar or stain, no " mark of her 
shame," no " seal of her sorrow." Tlie far-off 
hills swell their white purity against the pure blue 
of the heaven. The sheeted splendor of the fields 
sparkles back a thousand suns for one. The trees 
lose their nakedness and misery and desolation, 
and every slenderest twig is clothed upon with 
glory. All the roofs are blanketed with snow ; 
all the fences are bordered. Every gate-post is 
statuesque ; every wood-pile is a marble quarry. 
Harshest outlines are softened. Instead of angles, 
and ruggedness, and squalor, there are billowy, 
fleecy undulations. Nothing so rough, so com- 
mon, so ugly, but it has been transfigured into 
newness of life. Everywhere the earth has re- 
ceived beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourn- 
ing, the garment of praise for the spirit of heavi- 
ness. Without sound of hammer or axe, without 
the grating of saw or the click of chisel, prose has 
been sculptured into poetiy. The actual has put 
on the silver veil of the ideal. 

Will you look more closely? A part is, if 
possible, more beautiful than the whole. On the 
Brobdignagian textui'e of your coat-sleeve, one 
wandering snow-flake has alighted. Gaze at it or 
ever it vanishes from your sight. What a world 
of symmetry it discloses to you ! What an airy, 
fairy, crystalline splendor ! What delicate spires 
of feathery light shoot out from the centre with 



WINTER. 339 

tiny fringes, and rosy, radiating bars. In all your 
life you have never seen anything more beautiful, 
more perfect, and you may stand " breast-high " 
in just such marvellous radiance. Talk of rob- 
bers' caves and magic lamps 1 No Eastern im- 
agination, rioting in " barbaric pearl and gold," 
can eclipse the magnificence in which you live 
and move and have your being. 

And there is a deeper beauty than this. It 
is not only that the snow makes fair what was 
good before, but it is a messenger of love 
from heaven, bearing glad tidings of great joy. 
Hope for the future comes down to the earth in 
every tiny snow-flake. Under the purity that 
spans the hill-side, and lies lightly piled in the 
valleys, the earth-spirits and fairies are ceaselessly 
working out their multifold plans. The grasses 
hold high carnival safe under their crystal roof. 
The roses and lilies keep holiday. The snow- 
drops and hyacinths, and the pink-lipped May- 
flower, wait as they that watch for the morning. 
The life that stirs beneath thrills to the life that 
stirs above. The spring sun will mount higher 
and higher in the heavens ; the sweet snow will 
sink down into the arms of the violets, and, at 
the word of the Lord, the earth shall come up 
once more as a bride adorned for her husband. 

And " as the rain cometh down, and the snow 
from heaven, and returneth not thither, but 
watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth 



340 COUNTRY LIVING. 

and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, 
and bread to the eater : so sliall my word be 
that goeth forth out of my mouth : it shall not 
return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that 
which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing 
whereto I sent it." 

Native land ! Fatherland ! Is not the word 
spoken to you ? 

O beautiful, sorrowful country I for whom the 
watch-fires of freedom have been lighted on the 
hills, for whom the flames of sin lurk ghastly 
and baleful in the valleys ; baptized in the blood 
of heroes ; consecrated with the prayers of saints ; 
precious for your priceless past, unspeakably pre- 
cious for the hope of your golden future ; for all 
your faults never more dear than now ; rocked 
with the throes of a mortal agony ; shuddering 
through all your frame in the slimy coil of a 
monster ; your young strength once prostrated, 
but now alive, your young life poisone<], but re- 
newed again ; — shall not " Nature bring you 
solace"? Already the winter is past, the flowers 
appear on the earth ; the time of the singing of 
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is 
heard in our land. Shall we not therein read a 
sweet prophecy ? The winter of your discontent 
shall be made glorious summer. You too shall 
go out with joy, and be led forth with peace ; the 
mountains and the hills shall break forth before 
you into singing, and all the trees of the field 



WINTER. 341 

shall clap tlieir hands. Instead of the thorn 
shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the 
brier shall come up the myrtle-tree ; and it shall 
be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting 
sign that shall not be cut off. 

There is nothing like winter in the country to 
develop one's resources and mature one's graces. 
Blocked up by the snow, driven in by the cold, 
forced to subside on yourself, it stands you in 
hand to be agreeable and inventive. If your 
chimney smokes, if your door-knobs loosen and 
come off, if the rain soaks through the walls, if 
the roof is leaky, if holes yawn in your shoes, 
if your skate-straps are too short, or your sled- 
runner is broken, or your note-paper gives out, 
you cannot jump upon the train and go to the 
next market-town to be set up again. You must 
either wait for the spring or a January thaw, or 
you must contrive some remedy yourself. 

If your Decembers have been genially warmed 
into Junes without any intervention of your own, 
and you find yourself suddenly in a remote village, 
under the necessity of attending to your fire or 
going without it, you will often be in that state 
of mind which will demand for solace a constant 
repetition of the old saw, " It takes a fool to make 
a fire." If, worse than this, you sufter yourself 
to be lured by siren songs of warmth, conven- 
ience, and economy from the good old groves of 



342 COUNTRY LIVING. 

hickory and oak and maple, to try, like the old 
man in the spelling-book, what virtue there is in 
stones, you will have an admirable opportunity to 
cultivate the virtue of patience ; and patience is a 
divine virtue. When we look at God, holy, just, 
and kind, and at his creatures, rebelling against 
him, cruel to each other, polluting themselves with 
sin, and violating his wise laws, — and yet see how 
he ever makes his sun to rise upon evil and good, 
and sends his rain upon just and unjust, contin- 
uing to all alike the blessings of seed-time and 
harvest, — we are ready to say, that patience is of 
all virtues the most divine. 

But it is not only divine, it is pre-eminently a 
human virtue. It works into daily life a sweet- 
ness, a balm, a peacemaker, a consoler. It makes 
home happy. It shames vice. It disarms ill- 
temper. It goes far to make society tolerable. 
So important is this virtue esteemed in the Divine 
economy, that a large part of our experience is 
framed so as to strengthen and improve it. We 
deviate into no path in which we cannot find some 
circumstance fitted to exercise and perfect it. It 
is, however, a solemn thought, that opportunities 
wasted are burdens upon our shoulders. If we 
grow wicked by a means which was intended and 
adapted to make us grow good, we grow a great 
deal more wicked than we should if such means 
had never been tried. A blessing turned into a 
curse is doubly accursed. Sorrows that do not 



WINTER. 343 

soften, harden. Life is full of little occasions wliich 
may help us to grow in grace, and may show us 
whether we have already done so ; but neglected 
or perverted, they deteriorate us. 

But these reflections will not occur to you in 
the early stages of your experience with coal fires. 
On the contrary, you will begin your work full 
of hope. Careful to follow to the letter every 
direction, you are confident of success. With 
half-contemptuous commiseration, you think of 
some cousin, or aunt, or friend, who has been 
appalled by the lions in the way, and turned 
back. You consider it a weakness of character, 
rather to be pitied than severely censured. You 
are charitable to all the world as you lay in 
your kindlings with mathematical regularity, — 
paper, shavings, splinters, sticks. You apply 
the match. A furious roar springs u]). You 
start back, half delighted, half scared. What if 
the chimney should catch fire. You hustle on 
the coal to smother the exceeding fierceness. The 
roar crackles, sputters, stifles, and dies the death. 
There is a pause. You open the door, and peep 
in furtively. A faint siTggestion of flame and half 
a dozen sparks. A second peep, — the flames have 
disappeared, the sparks are diminished, A third 
peep, — black as Acheron. The kindlings burned 
charmingly, but they mistook means and ends, 
and kindled nothing. You put in your hand and 
pry under the surface to see if anything is hap- 



344 COUNTRY LIVING. 

pening. Whew ! Who could imagine tliat any- 
thing so cold-looking could be so hot, or anything 
so hard-looking could be so smutty. But vour 
black fingers will be atoned for to-morrow by 
three little white blisters at this moment develop- 
ing under the blackness. Then you turn a crank 
and let the coal down, that you may take it out 
and try again. Down it comes crashing into the 
drawer. You proceed to pull it out. Something 
sticks. You wriggle and twist, and jerk it in 
vain. You are forced to thrust your arm into 
the stove, and take the coal out by handfuls. 
Then you begin anew, and after consuming wood 
enough to heat your room all day, and time 
enough for as much more wood to grow, you 
succeed in getting a fire. But you do not mind 
the time spent, for you say to yourself, " It is 
once for all." You flatter yourself that, once 
kindled, it will stay kindled. You are doomed to 
disappointment. You open the stove door in the 
morning, and it is " upper, nether, and surround- 
ing darkness," abysmal and dismal. You have 
to go through the whole process again, with the 
added misery of ashes, which come, puff"! into 
your face, a suffocating cloud, on the slightest 
provocation. You plod on for a few days. Every 
separate member of your family has a separate 
opinion, and proffers different advice, — all entirely 
conjectural and at random. You have recourse to 
the experienced. One advises you to shake down 



WINTER. 345 

the old coal before you put on new, which you do 
vigorously, and shake all the life out of it. Then 
you are told that you must keep it quiet, and you 
tread gingerly, laying in the fresh coal carefully 
Avitli your own shuddering fingers, — as if you 
were planning a surprise, and designed to get it 
on fire before it should know what was going on ; 
but the enemy is on the alert, and baffles you with 
a " masterly inactivity." Meanwhile there comes 
a cold snap, and the thermometer plumps down to 
zero. Everything about the house freezes solid, 
and breaks. Friends who call are pressed to have 
a shawl, and stop to dinner. Bores are blandly 
invited, in rural formula, to " take off their coats 
and make themselves at home." Then somebody 
tells you that the grate must be poked to keep it 
clear. Submissive, you procure a sharp stick in 
lieu of a poker, which, if it exists at all, is not visi- 
ble to the naked eye, and, like any Parsee, prone 
on the floor you fall before your swart divinity, 
and ram the stick up under the grate. Down 
come the ashes in a gray shower over your sleeve 
and hand, covering every thread of the one, and 
filling every pore of the other ; but desperately 
you poke on, till light shines through. Sometimes 
your exertions will be rewarded with success, and 
sometimes not ; and this is your great perplexity. 
Everything is inconsequent. Similar causes pro- 
duce dissimilar effects. You do, with slavish imi- 
tation, everything you are told to do, till it is 

15* 



346 COUNTRY LIVING. 

shown to be useless, when you give rein to genius 
and branch off on your own account, in brilliant 
and startling combinations. You shake down, and 
refrain from shaking. You poke, and you cease 
poking. You set the wood on fire before you 
put the coal on, and you put the coal on before 
you set the wood on fire. You open everything 
openable, and shut everything shutable, and you 
I never have any inkling of what will happen next. 
There is no satisfaction when the fire does burn, 
for it does not burn logically. It is an isolated 
fact. It does not establish anything, nor indi- 
cate anything. No palpable reason exists why it 
should burn this time, that did not apply with 
equal force to the four previous occasions when 
it declined burning. It ought to have gone out 
last night as well as the night before. It is like 
the proverbial woman, — 

"If she will, she will, you may depend on 't, 
If she won't, she won't, and there 's an end on 't." 

It is like an over sensitive man, — one of 
those disagreeable unfortunates who are known 
as "touchy." If you don't treat it "just so," 
it is all over with you. Its dignity is as ticklish 
as that of our self-made aristocrats. You can 
scarcely look askance at it without disturbing its 
equilibrium. You begin to believe that some 
" imp of the perverse " has taken up his abode 
there, — that some unhoused gnome is wreaking 
vengeance on you for his violated home, — and 



WINTER. 347 

you fall gradually into a pugnacious mood. You 
get a way of looking at the coal as a malicious and 
skilful foe, and it is a drawn battle between you. 
You grow, as the country-people say, " short- 
waisted." The harder it is for the coal to kindle, 
the easier it becomes for you. Your conversation 
turns growly and snappish. You wax dangerous. 
Every inquiry as to your progress, you get to look 
on as an insult. You suffer under a sense of in- 
jury. You feel as if the world and the elements 
were in league against you. You are sensitive of 
the slightest allusion to fire. You have a: kind of 
pyrophobia. 

No, my dear friend, this will never do. This is 
all wrong. Tliis is the abuse, not the iise, of coal. 
You are wasting anthracitic opportunities for the 
development of the noble virtue of patience. Be 
not deceived. Martyrdom comes to but few. 
Few are called to resist unto blood, striving 
against sin, but many are called to resist unto 
inconvenience, restraint, and self-denial ; and an 
incessant pin-pricking is perhaps harder to bear 
than the swift-descending axe, or the cranch of a 
lion's jaws ; and if yon come off conqueror from 
the one, you shall in no wise lose your reward, any 
more than he who calmly faced the horrors of the 
other. If the trials to which you are subjected 
seem all the more severe from being so petty, re- 
member that Rome was not built in a day, and it 
is the constant, hourly chipping at the quarried 



348 COUNTRY LIVING. 

marble tliat is to rear in the end — the temple of 
God. Remember, too, that however out of joint 
the matter may be, fretting will never mend it. It 
is bad to feel your hands growing rough, but it is 
worse to let your temper keep them company. It 
ruffles you to hear of stoves that run like a clock 
from November to May, but it won't smooth 
you to go into a rage about it. It is aggravat- 
ing to have the fire burn up and warm the room 
delightfully, just as the stove-man, for whom you 
have sent to see what the trouble is, arrives, and 
tlien to have it go out as soon as he does ; but 
what are you going to do about it ? If you are 
wise, you will remember that you are only sharing 
the common lot. You will think of the sreat 
multitudes who have passed through the same 
tribulations, and the summer atmosphere of a thou- 
sand happy homes will beckon you on to victory. 
You will think, with admiring gratitude, of the man 
who first discovered the combustibility and practi- 
cability of coal. You will see the fatherliness of 
your Creator in making this wonderful provision 
for you, — how the giant trees leaped heavenward 
at his bidding, and at his balding died, to become 
in death your ministei^s. What wisdom and be- 
nevolence wrought this marvellous work in the 
great laboratories of the earth, — scooped out 
those vast basins, piled therein these inexhaustible 
treasures, more precious than gold, and so took 
care for your comfort ages and ages before you 



WINTER. 349 

were born ! And will you be petulant because 
you carry your end of the pole a little awkwardly 
at first ? Shall your orisons and vespers be the 
prayer of the daughters of the horse-leech ? Will 
you not be content that the Lord has given you 
the coal, but will you require him to work a mir- 
acle to kindle it ? For you fail only because you 
are fiohting; against the nature of tliino;s, and here 
is another lesson which you may learn, — the in- 
exorableness of law. Not a spark of fire, not 
the smallest black coal-speck on your finger, but 
follows the law of its being, fixed, relentless. 
Your intentions are good. You mean to do right. 
But you are transgressing some chemical or me- 
chanical law, and the dumb coal, which has never 
deviated from rectitude, is a swift witness against 
you. With nature, ignorance is no excuse for 
transgression. The penalty follows surely on the 
heels of sin. Is the law of matter more fixed than 
the law of mind ? If you cannot sin against life- 
less stones with impunity, can you sin against a 
living soul, and go scot free ? If a right purpose 
will not kindle a fire without wise means, will it 
fashion a son's mind ? Do you not see how the 
blind may mislead the blind, with utmost tender- 
ness, to destruction ? 

Above all things, do not " give up." Rise to 
the height of the emergency. Be master of your- 
self Get the victory over impatience ; so from 
the stubborn coal shall you express the oil of joy. 



350 



COUNTRY LIVING. 



and find beauty for ashes. Every lambent tongue 

of flame shall be to you a messenger ft'om heaven, 

and every day a pentecost. With a heart open to 

all pure influences, you shall feel the full 

force of those sweet words, " Lo ! I am 

with you always," and with eyes 

which the Lord hath opened, 

you shall see " sermons in 

stones, and good in 

evervthino:." 



My Flower-Bed. 




AM oppressed with a feeling that, 
I, whatever welcome my literary venture 
'' may meet, I have not, so far as appears 
y *^ l in this volume, made a brilliant figure 
at gardening. I think, therefore, that I ought, 
in justice to myself, to relate the distinguished 
success which attended my second attempt. An 
ordinary person would have been deterred, by so 
unparalleled a series of disasters as befell me, from 
ever making another endeavor ; but, for my part, 
I like always to retire with the honors of war. 
Therefore, when February crept away to the 
north, and March came breezing up from the 
south, I went to a seed-shop and laid in an entire 
new supply of garden ammunition. 

I began on a smaller scale than before. My 
ambition had not forgotten the severe lesson of 
the past spring. I relinquished the idea of supply- 
ing our table with vegetables, and concluded to 
devote myself solely to the department of the 
beautiful. Instead of taking the whole estate for 



352 COUNTRY LIVING. 

a centre, and radiating over the land in all direc- 
tions, I pre-empted from the Avaste of corn and 
potato-field a corner, ill-suited, indeed, to my 
desires and my dreams, but better suited, I was 
forced to admit, to my inexperience. 

A square piece of ground, of moderate size, was 
the basis of my flower-bed. The circle described by 
the drapery of a fashionably-dressed woman, stand- 
ing in the centre, would be scarcely more than 
contained in it. But does not " Rare Ben " say, 

" In small proportions we just beauties see, 
And in small measure life may perfect be " ? 

It is amazing to note the. interest one has in the 
weather when one becomes a landed proprietor. 
It is equally amazing to note the coquetry of the 
weather ■ when it becomes aware of that fact. 
With the poets, who have hitherto kept me in 
Almanacs, April is a sunny, showery month ; May 
melts into music and warmth ; and June is redo- 
lent of roses. But, O Messrs. Poets, you have 
dealt treacherously with me, or else you have 
studied nature from Chaucer, not from herself. 
What did April do for me this year ? Blocked 
me up with a snow-storm. What did May do ? 
Took advantage of her name, entrapped my coal- 
stove into the garret, then benumbed my fingers, 
and turned me into a Nova-Scotian. Nay, Winter, 
lingering, was not content to chill the lap of May, 
but even set young June a-shivering. The fact is, 
Spring as a figure of speech, and the prolific mother 



MY FLOWER-BED. 353 

of figures of speech, is a good thing ; but Spring 
as an institution ought to be abolished. It has 
outhved its usefuhiess. It exists only in tradition ; 
and that tradition is productive of much mischief. 
Our idea of it, derived chiefly from Old English 
ballads, smells of violets, and soft airs, and gay, 
green woods, and frisking lambs, and golden- 
throated birds. In pursuance of which idea we 
get up May parties on May-day, and lay aside 
our flannels, and make ourselves miserable, let 
alone the rheumatisms and neuralgias and con- 
sumptions whose highway we make straight. 
The blue skies, the greening fields, and the poets 
aforesaid, conspire to draw us into the trap of 
raw east wind and chill vapor, from which we 
return with a stiff neck, a sore throat, and settled 
melancholy. All this would be obviated if there 
could only be a general understanding that Winter 
in this latitude lasts till the Fourth of July, and 
comes out in spots all summer. We should then 
know what to depend upon, and the " fair, mild 
days " would be so many extra blessings thrown 
in. That is, the rule would be comfortable, and 
the exceptions delicious ; whereas now, the rule 
is indiffei-ent, and the exceptions intolerable. 

Understand, I am not finding fault with the 
weather, but with our nomenclature. A north- 
east snow-storm is a splendid thing in its way ; 
only don't let us pretend it is a shower of apple- 
blossoms, and act accordingly. 

w 



354 COUNTRY LIVING. 

But snowy April days and murky May mornings 
may cultivate the divine virtue of patience, if 
nothing else, I said to myself, as I stood, flower- 
seeds in hand, awaiting the Spring. It came at 
last, or something which a vivid imagination, com- 
bined with the Ahnanac, could call Spring, and I 
levelled and spaded and raked and squared my 
flower-bed that was to be. On the north and 
south I bounded it with a line of currant-bushes ; 
on the east and west with rose-bushes. At least, 
that is what they were given to me for. In 
my heart I believed they were mere dry sticks, 
but I stuck them into the ground, nothing waver- 
ing. Between the rose-sticks I set out pansy- 
roots, and between the currant- sticks dahlias, and 
whatever is the plural of gladiolus. Next came 
the question of internal arrangement. You may 
let a forest grow wild. Nature will group her 
trees, and drape herself with all manner of creep- 
ing mosses, and trailing berries, and sprightly 
undergrowth, and you shall find nothing amiss. 
But snip off a little bit of nature, and the case 
is altered. A garden that you can put in your 
pocket .is nothing if it is not regular. You must 
have a design, a diagram. I thought of a star. 
But a star is a great deal easier to think of than 
it is to make. If you don't believe me, I should 
just like to have you try it. I have a vague im- 
pression that, if I could have got hold of a treatise 
on geometry, I could have constructed one on 



3IY FLOWER-BED. 355 

scientific principles, and without much trouble ; 
but I don't suppose there was such a treatise with- 
in twenty miles ; so I had to bungle with sticks 
and strino-s. However, the result was an obvious 
star. To be sure, the rays were rather " peak<3d,''' 
and not exactly equidistant at the tips, and some- 
what skewy at the centre ; but it was a very good 
star for all that. At least, it was more like a star 
than like anything else. Aid aster aut nulliis ! 
When I had completed that, I put outside, between 
the five rays, two gladiolus roots, a pansy, a 
circle of candy-tuft, and one of lily of the valley. 
Then there was nothing to do but wait. That 
is the beauty of being a farmer. A little pro- 
vision, a few days of hard work, and the sweet 
sunshine, the soft rain, the silent dews, finish the 
business. You do not have to hammer away day 
after day at your lapstone or your sermon. Na- 
ture herself puts a shoulder to your wheel, and 
rolls you on to fortune. 

Or would, if it were not for the weeds and 
chickens and bugs and worms, that choke and 
peck and gnaw her gifts. A few innocent flower- 
seeds will make a remarkable number of enemies ; 
and it is surprising to see how much faster weeds 
grow than jflowers. I wonder what the result 
would be if one should set out Roman wormwood, 
and tend it carefully. Would it forget it was a 
weed, fancy itself a flower, and become shy and 
sensitive ? As it is, I have found it one of the 



356 COUNTRY LIVING. 

most enterprising of individuals. Before I thought 
of looking for one of my roots or seeds, up came 
this Italian bitterness, speedily followed by the 
pig-plant, close on whose heels tramped the smart- 
weed ; and in a twinkling appeared quitch-grass, 
and sorrel, and a mob of little villanous vines, 
sprawling things, which had never been plant- 
ed, and never came to anything, and had no 
business there, and only gave the trouble of pull- 
ing them up. 

But one warm night something happened. The 
evening had given no sign ; but under the silent 
moon a host of tiny warriors, clad in Lincoln- 
green, unsheathed their sharp swords, cleft the 
brown earth, and when the day dawned there 
they were marshalled in knightly array, along the 
white lines of my star. 

I know few sensations more exquisitely satis- 
factoiy than the springing u^ of something which 
your own hands have planted. You have, per- 
haps, — if you are a neophyte, — had a lurking 
fear lest you might not detect the difference be- 
tween the gold and the gilt, have suffered weeds 
to flourish, lest, in exterminating them, you might 
ignorantly exterminate something that was not a 
weed ; but when the gold comes, you recognize 
its gleam. A flower is no more like a weed 
than if it had never grown. It is pale, and soft, 
and juicy, and tender. The first lifting of its 
little face above ground is a mute appeal to your 



MY FLOWER-BED. 357 

sympathy and protection. It would seem as if a 
harsh look might crush out its little life. But 
the weed is a saucy, reckless, pushing, defiant, 
strong-nerved Yankee fellow. " Here I am," 
he says, tossing his plumes six inches in the air 
before you knew he was " anywhere round." 
" Here I am. You did n't invite me, but I 
came, and brought all my brothers, and we are 
going to have a rollicking time of it. You can 
give me the cut direct. O yes. But I am not 
sensitive. I am not overladen with modesty. 
It is a very nice place, this world, with its 
sun and dew and rain, and I don't intend to 
be driven out of it in a hurry." 

I suppose every school-girl and school-boy in 
New England has compared weeds and flowers 
to the vices and virtues of the human heart ; 
but you don't take in the full force of the illus- 
tration till you have a flower-bed of your own, 
and actually see the thing going on with your 
own eyes. Then you make the illustration 
yourself, and it seems just as fresh to you as 
if nobody had ever made it before. This living 
A. M. 5865, or thereabouts, is very damaging to 
originality, — when it comes to writing. Adam 
and Seth and Noah had the advantage of us 
there. Yet as a matter of living, sun and sky, 
the broad-bosomed earth and the " many-sound- 
ing sea," are newly created for every baby bom. 

When the world was young, /,he seed spake 



358 COUNTRY LIVING. 

vaguely of the soul. But Paul, standing in the 
newly-risen light, saw what his fathers could not 
see, and in unfolding leaf-buds " learned the 
language of another world." Ever since, the 
spring's resurrection is a revelation. You lay 
in the brown soil the ugly, shrivelled, insensate 
seed, but under that unseemly garb the soul 
of the plant keeps watch and ward. Life is 
there, hidden in death. When the fulness of 
time is come, life shall burst its cerements, and 
mount upward to its fate, which is sunshine 
and greenness, and royal beauty, and matchless 
grace. 

So this mortal puts on immortality. 

I suppose a professional gardener might laugh 
at my flowers. In fact, people do laugh at them 
who are not professional gardeners, — for that mat- 
ter, who are no gardeners at all, any more than 
I am. They think I don't see them, but I do. 
They think that I think a nasturtion is some- 
thing very smart, and grand, and recherche. I 
don't think anything of the sort. I know as 
well as they that it is a very common, kitchen- 
gardeny kind of a flower. So are poppies. So 
are mallows. So are lady's-delights, and bache- 
lor's-buttons, and pinks, and candy-tuft, and 
asters, and coreopsis, and roses ; but wdiat of that ? 
Is a thing less beautiful because it is common ? 
The blue sky bends over the evil and the good. 
The earth unfolds her loveliness to the just and to 



MY FLOWER-BED. 359 

the unjust. No title-deeds can convey possession 
of the splendor or the beauty of the universe. No 
landed proprietor can fence in from lowliest eyes 
the swell of the hills, or the scoop of the valleys. 
No gas agent can turn off the bland breezes from 
those who cannot pay monthly bills therefor. No 
" merchant prince " can adorn his garden with 
the grandeur and the glory of the sea ; while the 
coarsest clodhopper may cleave its crystal curves, 
be rocked on its heaving bosom, and sink to rest 
with its surging lullaby. God makes his most 
beautiful things most common, and shall we baffle 
his benevolence, spurning his blessings ? A nas- 
turtion " common," — with the heart of a thou- 
sand sunsets shrined in its kingly cup, or the 
shadow of royal robes empurpling its " wine-dark 
depths " ! Common ! shall I see less beauty in 
its golden gleam because that gleam has flashed 
brightness into myriads of hearts ? Shall it not 
rather have an added value ? The hard hand of 
labor, the wasted hand of disease, the restless hand 
of poverty, have found peace, and hope, and joy, 
in training these happy flowers to grasp the sun- 
shine, and the glad gifts of the dew. I see on 
the folds of their scarlet banners the message of 
good-will to weary souls. Peering into those 
glowing caverns, the radiant eyes of little chil- 
dren laugh up to meet my own, and the touch of 
their tender stems is like the touch of groping 
baby-fingers. Shine on, fairest messengers of 



3G0 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Heaven, and show to all waiting, toiling, dislieart- 
ened, sorrowful lives 

" A strange and mystic story, — 
How moistened earthly dust can wear celestial glory." 

My horticultural cook-book affirms that nastur- 
tlons make a toothsome salad. I dare say. I 
should like to see the individual, however, who 
should venture to go browsing among my nastur- 
tlons. I am strongly opposed to Judge Lynch's 
code of laws, but I think I should give that per- 
son something harder to swallow than the worst 
salad he ever saw. 

A poppy is not like a nasturtion, but it has a 
fringed, downy beauty all its own. A mystical, 
crimson languor suflPuses the encircling air. Vivid 
blood-red plashes stain its white softness. Some- 
times, in riotous revelling. It hurls back the arrows 
of the sun, till my dazzled eyes can hardly endure 
the brightness. But pale or purple, it Is enchanted 
ground. Under that fretted greenery, the poets 
lie asleep. Hence, far hence, all ye profaner ones ! 
It Is not for you to tread the courts of the poppy- 
crowned god. 

" Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe, 
And low, where dawning day doth never peeije, 
His dwelling is; there Tethys his wet bed 
Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe 
In silver deaw his ever-drouping hed. 
And, more, to lulle him in his slumber soft, 
A trickling stream from high rock tumbling downe, 
And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft, 
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne 
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoone. 



MY FLOWER-BED. 361 

Carelesse Quiet I_ves 

Wrapt in eternal silence forre from erimyes." 

So dream the poets. But common people must 
keep wide awake. 

When my nasturtions came, they came with a 
■leap. They hardly seemed to have grown. They 
lifted their broad, shield-shaped leaves, one morn- 
ing, and looked as if they had always been there. 
But poppies tread delicately. There is just a faint 
line of green, shading the brown soil. For several 
days it hardly increases. While you are looking 
at it, you persuade yourself that nothing will come 
of it, — there is nothing there. But when you 
are away, you have a very strong impression that 
something was there, and will " turn up." While 
you are waiting further developments, the " heated 
•cerm " comes, — dry, dusty, suffocating, blinding, 
baking, brazen days, — when the sun lanmasks his 
batteries, and opens upon you a steady fire. If 
you want to know how your flowers feel about it, 
go out doors barefoot, and the grass that was so 
tender, and cool, and dewy in the morning, is 
cvirled and crisp, and burns your feet. (Neverthe- 
less, it is an excellent thing to go barefoot. Civil- 
ization is shocked at the mention of such a thino;, 
but Hygiene rejoices. Physicians tell us that one 
of the reasons why our Irish population are so 
healthy, notwithstanding their untidy, irregular 
habits, is that they go barefoot so much. Cer- 
tainly the stout frames and brawny arms of Irish- 

16 



362 COUNTRY LIVING. 

women are an argument very difficult to over- 
come ; while, in point of comfort, nothing can sur- 
pass untrammelled, unhampered feet. It stands 
to reason. Shoes are bad heat-conductors. They 
confine and accumulate it ; but without shoes and 
stockings it passes off as fast as it is generated, 
and not only the feet, but the whole body pre- 
serves a pleasant equilibrium. People have only 
to lay aside their prejudices, and their shoes and 
stockings will follow, till the summer custom and 
costume will be as fashionable as Nahant.) 

Presently the parched look of your flower-bed 
excites your compassion. You water it, but the 
water runs off the hardened surface. You loosen 
the soil around, and it is a little better. In the 
height of the drought the spout of the water-pot 
generally comes off, and then your strong plants 
are drenched with torrents, and for your weak 
ones you take a colander, which is not " handy." 
So you blunder on, day after day, wishing and 
watching for a thunder-shower or a tin-pedler. 
By and by a cloud in the west appears, rises, 
spreads, and descends in beautiful and doubly wel- 
come abundance. The dear, benevolent rain ! the 
kindly, saving rain ! It is better than a thousand 
watering-pots with the spouts all on. It does the 
business so easily and so thoroughly. You hardly 
wonder that 

" Danae in a golden tower, 
Where no love was, loved a shower." 



MY FLOWER-BED. 363 

You are in love with it yourself, and as you stand 
silent, with smiling eyes, a silver voice begins to 
well murniurously around you; but just here the 
rumbling of wheels breaks in upon the murmur- 
ous voice, and a tin-pedler's cart heaves in sight, 
blossoming with watering-pots. Of course you 
don't buy any, but it is "trying" to see them 
just then. After this, however, you are in no 
doubt about the poppies. They leap up into 
rounded vigor and obviousness, and the whole 
garden is quickened. 

I made a mistake in my planting. I put the 
seeds in too close, and the centre of my star is a 
perfect tangle. The nasturtions had the advan- 
tage at the start, and they keep it ; but they are 
smothered in their own sweetness, and the gilias 
and geraniums fairly gasp for breath. A sly little 
portulacca hides under an overgrown marigold, 
and cheated me for a loner while. I thouiiht sev- 
eral mornings that he had buds on the brink of 
opening, and sometimes I surely thought I saw 
buds that had opened and closed again, but that 
was all, so I set a watch, and one day, just at 
noon, (when I never visited him, and he thought 
himself safe from intrusion,) I spied a flash of 
Solferino, rushed upon him, and caught him in 
the very act. Since then he has hung out his 
colors quite openly. My rose sticks have pros- 
pered beyond measure. I counted fourteen buds 
on one of them. My gladiolus is the delight of 
my eyes. 



364 COUNTRY LIVING. 

" A daughter of the gods, divinely tall, 
And most divinely fair." 

My dahlias came up headlong, four or five in a 
group. Somebody said I must break off all but 
one. I rejected the Vandalism with horror. I 
am a Republican and a Christian, and I would 
have no Turks about that could " bear no brother 
near the throne." It shows the weakness of 
moral principle, that three weeks after, when I 
saw a bed of dahlias twice as tall as mine, I came 
home and broke mine oif with a bleeding heart. 
Then they shot up, and a high wind came and 
twisted and prostrated them remorselessly. (Then 
I hunted up stakes and poles, worn-out broom- 
sticks and dislocated hoe-handles, and tied up my 
dahlias, till my flower-bed might have been taken 
for a returned regiment from a thirty years' war. 
Presently one of them " made an effort," and put 
out a flower, which looked like an agitated turnip. 
I never saw such a dismal, washed-out rag in my 
life. I do not think much of dahlias. They are 
coarse and unsightly in leaf, and forlorn in flower, 
and ten to one don't flower at all. I call them 
nothing more than an aristocratic potato. Several 
of my most beautiful and promising plants I pulled 
up, because Halicarnassus said they were weeds. 
I did not believe it then, and the more I think of 
it, the more I do not believe it still. It was envy 
on his part, not weeds on mine. Still I pulled 
them up. So I lost the cream of my garden ; but 



MY FLOWER-BED. 



365 



the skim-milk that is left is ravishingly tooth- 
some^ 

Dear old Earth, " tickle her with a hoe, and she 
laughs with a harvest." I scarcely so much as 
tickled her. I did but lay the tip of an unskilful 
finger in one of her dimples, and she broke forth 
before me into sinmno;. Dear old mother of us 
all, what you were before Adam I cannot con- 
ceive, for with the burden of his curse upon you, 
you are more lovely than tongue can tell, or 
pencil portray, and in your bosom lie 
hidden treasures of strength, and 
honor, and glory, and blessing 
for him who is wise to woo. 
The earth is full of 
the riches of 
the Lord. 



Lights among the Shadows of 
OUR Civil War. 




'IVIL war is a very terrible thing. Be- 
cause it is terrible, however, it is not 
necessarily unmitigated. Even civil 
war may have its sunny side. In the 
lessons which it teaches, in the sophistry which it 
demolishes, in the manhood which it develops, we 
may find wherewithal to stay our souls, when they 
are ready to faint with the burden and heat of this 
our bloody day. 

And first, what has become of the people who 
were always talking about the bravery, and virtue, 
and hardihood, and patriotism of our forefathers, 
in sad contrast with the pusillanimity, effeminacy, 
and selfishness of us their descendants ? You have 
doubtless heard persons, in and out of the news- 
papers, linger regretfully over the olden devotion 
to country, sacrifice for a righteous cause, perse- 
verance under difficulties, undaunted bravery in 
battle, and unshaken fortitude in defeat. They 
would speak with reproachful admiration of the 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 367 

mothers who beat their pewter spoons into bullets, 
and sent their sons to battle ; and then would 
come a sigh over these degenerate days, when 
men think of nothing but to buy and sell, and 
get gain. I must say that I, for one, never did 
believe one word of it. I think we are just as 
good as our fothers, and always have been ; but 
you cannot expect martial virtues in a time of 
peace, any more than you can expect the triumphs 
of peace in time of war. I always believed that, 
if we ever had an opportunity, we should show 
ourselves just as brave, just as loyal, just as 
self-sacrificing, as our fathers. Did they fight in 
a holier cause than we ? Did they exercise a 
greater forbearance than we, so long as forbear- 
ance seemed of any avail ; and when forbearance 
would have been weakness, did they spring to 
arms with greater alacrity ? Were they more 
prodigal of men and money ? Have we not 
brought forward our precious things, laying upon 
the altar even our prejudices, and preferences, and 
opinions ? Did our fathers fight for liberty ? So 
do we. Was their struggle less for themselves 
than for the fixture ? So is ours. We should 
have got along very comfortably, letting things go 
on as they have been going on. That we might 
leave to the future a righteous legacy, that we 
might maintain in its integrity a righteous cause, 
we have sacrificed, not only without a murmur, 
but with a spontaneous and irresistible enthusiasm. 



368 COUNTRY LIVING. 

our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor, — 
lives just as dear, honor just as sensitive, and 
fortunes ten times as large as those of our fathers. 
The " Spirit of '76 " was noble ; but its noble- 
ness is rivalled and its power excelled by the 
Spirit of '61. The blood of our fathers does not 
run thin, and pale, and sordid in our veins. The 
canker of peace has not taken out our life. Let 
us have done forever with this exaltation of the 
past by the depreciation of the present. The 
world is richer now in all the elements of great- 
ness than it ever was before, and this is the 
Golden Age. 

Another compensation is the love of country 
springing up in every Northern heart. It is to 
many of us a new revelation. Love is always 
creative. When a man begins to love a woman, 
a new world unfolds itself to him in this. With 
every baby born, the mother is herself new-born. 
When the soul awakens first to the love of Christ, 
old things pass away and all things become new. 
We have been living quietly under our vines and 
fig-trees. We have, as the mood took us, boasted 
of our government, or rebuked its administrators ; 
but, excepting those who have been abroad, we 
never had much feeling about it one way or the 
other. We have been protected by it. We have 
known it only by its constant benefactions, to 
which we were born, among which we were nur- 
tured, and of which we were scarcely more con- 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 369 

scious than of the air we breathed. It is not that 
we were especially ungrateful. We did not love, 
because there was nothing in particular to love. 
The President is too short-lived to create a strong 
attachment. Yesterday he was nobody, and to- 
morrow he will relapse into nobody. The Senate 
and House are not peculiarly adapted to call forth 
emotions of tenderness, nor can one in ordinary 
times wax wildly enthusiastic over a piece of 
bunting. We have no royal family to define, 
concentrate, and vivify our loyalty, so it had to 
go wandering for an object, or lie sleeping in the 
bottom of our hearts ; but the besom of war has 
swept away all difficulties. We want no princely 
blood now. A new love is born, strong, vigorous, 
full grown in a day. I don't know that we could 
tell precisely what it is that we love now, but it 
is something ! The love is there. It swells and 
surges in our hearts, it overflows our eyes. It 
quivers on every lip. It melts down all barriers 
of sect, and race, and religion, and politics. It 
throbs wherever a banner floats. It thrills out in 
brave, tender words, in manly deeds, in public 
generosities and private heroisms. Selfishness 
and worldliness shrivel and scorch in its white 
heat, and the hearts of the nation are welded 
too;ether as the heart of one man. We are, as 
we never were before, a united North. Sectional 
animosities, local hatreds, petty rivalries, are swal- 
lowed up in the deep sea of universal brotherhood, 
16* X 



370 COUNTRY LIVING. 

whose boundless extent is only made more impos- 
ing by the few traitors who are scudding under 
bare poles over its heaving bosom. 

There is another benefit which we would not 
inaugurate civil war to procure, but in which, 
since civil war has, unsought, reared his horrid 
front among us, we will rejoice and be glad. 
We shall, for a little while at least, be spared our 
Fourth of July literature and oratory. A certain 
map of the United States, probably in possession 
of a good many of my readers, is adorned along- 
its borders with various pictures, one of which is 
labelled, " An American showing to the Sover- 
eigns of Europe the Progress of his Country." 
The American stands, with one foot on a bale of 
goods, pointing to the steamers, and railroads, and 
schoolhouses, and churches which mark the land- 
scape. Louis Philippe, Victoria, Nicholas, and a 
mob of kings and queens, with their crowns on, 
crowd around him, mouths agape, eyes staring, in 
the most intense and unroyal astonishment and 
admiration. In England the picture might be 
relished as a clever caricature, but it comes too 
near the simple truth for home consumption. It 
is evidently sketched in perfect good faith, and is 
the expression of a widely prevalent, not to say 
universal feeling. We have thought, and have 
not always exercised the modesty which good taste 
would have suggested in saying, that 

" We are the greatest nation 
In all creation." 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 371 

No more of this for the present. We will, 
indeed, congratulate each other in a quiet way, 
among " own folks," (as I have just been doing,) 
on our many virtues and large capabilities, but we 
•will let our spread eagle go into winter quarters. 
We Avill cease for a while to ring changes on our 
" unexampled prosperity^" our " commerce whiten- 
ing every sea with its sails," our ingenuity filling 
the world with its products, our cities springing 
up in the wilderness, our great and glorious Re- 
public, laying hold of the Atlantic with one hand 
and the Pacific with the other, crowning her head 
with the snows of the Northern mountains and 
dipping her feet in the waters of the Southern 
seas. We have had a sudden check in our career. 
A strong man armed is at the door. He of our 
own blood which did eat of our bread has lifted up 
his heel against us. A brother has struck at his 
brother, — nay, worse than this, a man has done 
treason to his mother. The children whom she 
has nourished and brought up tenderly have re- 
belled against her, and striven to cut down her 
strenn;th. Shame and confusion of face belono;s to 
us all, — that our soil should have nourished, our 
skies spanned, and our airs sustained a treachery 
so base. We are in a death-grapple with our 
own, and a most glorious victory, as surely as the 
most disastrous defeat, bears in its bosom the seeds 
of a profound sorrow. 

Again, the cost of war is undoubtedly very 



372 COUNTRY LIVING. 

great. It takes a good deal of money to begin 
with, and a good deal more to carry it on, and not 
a little to repair damages after it is over. We 
must contract an immense debt, but our children 
must look to it. It will be their business as well 
as ours. The vices, the virtues, and the debts of 
the fathers are visited upon the children. The 
head of Louis the Sixteenth paid for th^e vices and 
extravagances and ambitions of the Grand Mon- 
arch. This seems an ungracious consolation, but 
it is not. Our children have the best of the bar- 
gain at that. We take the laboring oar. The 
price is the price of liberty, not of slavery. If 
we dance for them the dance of death, they may 
consider themselves well oflF if they only have to 
pay the piper. But what is this debt ? Where 
does our government get the money which it bor- 
rows ? It is loaned by our moneyed institutions, 
our banks, our citizens. And who are the gov- 
ernment ? Citizens likewise. The people are the 
sovereigns. Through their servants, chosen from 
and by themselves, they borrow of themselves 
twenty or a hundred millions of dollars, and there 
is a great debt ; but the money is owned as well 
as owed by themselves. In their capacity as gov- 
ernment, they owe money to themselves as people, 
— which is, to say the least, a rather Pickwickian 
kind of debt. 

Moreover, a debt may be the measure of credit. 
If a man owes a thousand dollars, it shows that 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 373 

his property is valued at that sum. The fabulous 
millions of the national debt of England is the 
lowest sum at which her pecuniary value to the 
people of England can be rated. This strong, 
pecuniary, direct interest which the people of 
England have in the perpetuity of their govern- 
ment, is one of the bulwarks of her Constitution. 
It helps to keep her throne steady when the Con- 
tinental thrones are tottering. Her debt is her 
life insurance. The moment her government is 
destroyed, the debt is wiped out, and the people, 
her creditors, are bankrupt. So Louis Napoleon, 
wise in his generation, issues his coupons, and, by 
making the people the creditors of his dynasty, 
makes them at the same time its firmest sup- 
porters. 

And what becomes of the money borrowed by 
the government ? It levies and maintains and 
transports armies, and provides the munitions of 
war. That is, it goes to the farmers, and butch- 
ers, and bakers, and grocers, and tailors, and 
shipbuilders, and gun-makers, — straight into the 
pockets of the people, just where it came from. 
It is not sunk in the ocean or burned in the fire, 
as a general thing. It is still in circulation, which 
is the only thing money is good for. 

And how is this debt to be paid, or upheld? 
By taxation. 

Our people have «generally been opposed to 
direct taxation, both politically and "socially. If 



374 COUNTRY LIVING. 

we want a Sunday-school library, instead of tak- 
ing the money and buying it out and out, we get 
up a fair. That is, we put ourselves to a world 
of trouble to make a wilderness of knick-knacks, 
that we don't want, and nobody else wants, and 
then we pay twenty-five or fifty cents for the 
supreme satisfaction of going to look at them, and 
three or four dollars more for the pleasure of lit- 
tering our houses with them, and then we are 
ready to buy our library, — at five times the cost, 
and five thousand times the trouble, that it would 
have been had each one quietly handed in his 
share of money in the first place. But each one 
won't quietly hand in his share, — he won't hand 
it in at all, and so you must have a fair, or go 
without. You may demonstrate twenty times 
over that one course of action is better than an- 
other to accomplish a certain end, but so long as 
people will not adopt the one, and will adopt the 
other, what are you going to do ? 

In respect of taxation, the case is somewhat 
similar. We pay duties on silk, and tea, and 
wine, and so, ordinarily, make shift to support the 
government without finding it out. But now the 
times are becoming extraordinary, the newspapers 
are discussing taxation, the bankers shut up their 
vaults demanding taxation, financiers announce 
the imperative necessity of taxation ; now, there- 
fore, let us have done witl»this child's play. So 
long as a question of finance is but a question of 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 375 

here or there, we mny 2?restidigitate it harmlessly 
enough, making the burden disappear under any 
pleasant name we choose, or even turning it into 
a profit as featly as Mr. Hermann disposes of his 
pocket-handkerchiefs, or makes a gold dollar out 
of a walnut ; but when it is a question of here or 
nowhere, it is time to demand new measures and 
new men. Is it supposed that this people is an 
infant, to be frightened by a bugbear ? Are we 
a nation of pagans, to fall down before a molten 
imaoe ? Do we shrine our gold and silver in 
the Holy of holies, with a " These be thy gods, 
O Israel " ? True, a forced taxation, a taxation 
levied by alien publicans and sinners, an arbitrary, 
unjust, and unrighteous taxation, we refused to 
submit to eighty years ago, and we have never 
repented of it since ; but a tax self-imposed, im- 
posed to insure the triumph of a cause in which 
all our religion, all our loyalty, all our honor, 
everything that is dear and sacred in life, nay, 
even life itself, is concerned, should be hailed, and 
shall be hailed, with acclamation. 

It is true there are not wanting those who will 
bemoan their heavy taxes, who seem already to 
see their golden eagles putting forth the wings 
which they are to take to themselves, in order 
to fly away ; but surely they are in a frightful 
minority, and if they are not, they ought to be. 
What in the world is money good for, if not 
for just such a crisis as this ? It brings comfort 



376 COUNTRY LIVING. 

and luxury, and, to a certain extent, position and 
power ; but what are all these to a man whose 
only child, the heir of his house and heart, lies 
mangled and dying on his own door-stone ? All 
that he prizes his money for, then, is the prompt 
and efficient aid it may bring to the suffering boy. 
Does he clench his hands and knit his brow, and 
mourn over the expense which the surgeon's visit 
will bring, and lament that the best mattress in 
the house will be thoroughly spoiled, and wonder 
if molasses and water won't do instead of French 
brandy ? Yet this is what we should do to groan 
over taxes. Taxes ! Every dollar that goes to 
put down the rebellion is stamped with the image 
and superscription of the Lord. Surely, surely, 
never was money so honored, so glorified, — so 
sanctified ! A handful of gold-dust, a scrap of 
rag-paper, moistened with our tears, hallowed by 
our prayers, may help to usher in the millennial 
year ! Shall we grumble ? Shall we not rather 
lay our hand on our mouth, and our mouth in the 
dust, and cry, " Will God in very deed conde- 
scend to accept so poor a gift ? " Behold heaven 
and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him. 
All the beasts of the forests are his, and the cattle 
upon a thousand hills, — nay, the earth and they 
that dwell therein ; yet he is willing to associate 
us with himself. As the father suffers the tiny 
fingers of his son to grasp the basket, that his little 
heart may please itself by fancying that he helps 



OUR CIVIL WAR. Zll 

carry it, and to learn early the luxury of doing 
good, so God, who spake, and the work of creation 
was done, who commanded, and the heavens, and 
the earth, and all the host of them stood fast, per- 
mits us to have part in the great work of the 
world's redemption. And Ave are to draw back, 
are we ? We Avill clutch a little longer this gold, 
which of itself is as worthless as the stones of the 
street, — which depends for its value solely upon 
what it can do for us ! We shall make a poor in- 
vestment. We can, if w^e will, convert our mone}' 
into stocks, and bonds, and mortgages, and houses, 
and carpets, and pictures, and laces, and plate, and 
jewels, and we shall receive such consideration as 
these will bring — when they are bought at the 
price of manhood ; and then we shall die, and they 
will all fall off from us, and we shall go, naked 
souls, into the next world, and who knoweth what 
shall be after us under the sun ? Or, on the other 
hand, we can turn our money into loyalty, and 
trust, and truth, and righteousness, and self-sacri- 
fice, and magnanimity, and devotion to a just 
cause, succor to the oppressed, strength to the 
w^eak, a cup of cold water to Christ's little ones, 
and so our money becomes for ever and ever a 
part of ourselves, and the best and noblest part, 
from wdiich neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor 
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor 
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any 
other creature, shall be able to separate us. O, 



378 COUNTRY LIVING. 

blessed are the rich in tliese days, who can bring 
all the firstlings of his flock for a sin-offering, and 
blessed are the poor also, for his pair of turtle- 
doves and two young pigeons may be brought for- 
ward unto the Lord, — nay, even the tenth part of 
an ephah of fine flour shall be an acceptable sacri- 
fice. Do we know that such an opportunity will 
ever again be offered us to speed our wealth or 
our poverty on an errand so grand ? Let us not 
sink below the height of the hour. 

And there is another advantage which, at such 
a juncture as this, taxation has above any and 
every other method of raising a revenue. They 
are round-about. This is direct. The disadvan- 
tage of a fair compared with a contribution-box 
is, that in the first you get something which is 
reckoned an equivalent for your money, — only a 
flimsy toy, perhaps, but enough to conduct away 
all the pleasure which the downright giving of 
your money would have afforded you. You have 
neither the satisfaction which arises from a " good 
bargain," nor the glow which springs from the 
gratification of a benevolent desire. So, even if 
we could put clown the rebellion by increasing 
our imports, and by other expedients of that na- 
ture, we should miss half the pleasure. We should 
not be giving money to our country, we should 
only be paying high prices for tea and sugar. 
But with direct taxation, there would be no go- 
between to rob us of all our benevolences by way 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 379 

of commission. We should stand face to face 
witli the object of our solicitude and our love. 
Our hearts would be warmed with the conscious- 
ness of actual contact. We should take joyfully 
the spoiling of our goods, knowing that we were 
laying up treasure in heaven and on earth for our- 
selves and for the generations that are to come. 

If there are any with whom these considerations 
have no weight, they may perliaps be influenced 
by another. When the nation shall give its voice 
in favor of taxation, there is no appeal. You 
will have to pay " whether or no." It is only 
whether you will do it jubilantly, reckoning your 
cross a crown, counting it all joy to spend and be 
spent in so glorious a service, and so receive back 
full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and 
running over ; or whether you will hold back, 
have your will throttled, your pride humbled, your 
purse taken by storm, and yet nothing for it after 
all. 

It remains now for the people to choose what 
they will do. We can rise up against taxation, 
save our money, and lose the day, lose the age, 
lose God's grand " occasion floating by," but what 
shall be the profit of such a gain ? 

" Gained — the infamy of fame, 
Gained — a dastard's deathless name, 
Gained — eternity of shame. 

" Lost — desert of manly worth, 
Lost — the right we had by birth, 
Lost — lost — freedom for the earth." 



380 COUNTRY LIVING. 

And it may be that such *a withholding will 
tend to the very poverty that we dread, the only 
poverty which our ignoble souls can feel. " Wis- 
dom for a man's self," says Bacon, " is, in many 
branches thereof, a depraved thing. But that 
which is specially to be noted is, that those which 
are lovers of themselves without a rival are many 
times unfortunate ; and whereas they have all their 
time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the 
end themselves sacrificed to the inconstancy of for- 
tune, whose wings they thought by their self-wis- 
dom to have pinioned." 

God forbid that any of us should, standing, as 
we soon shall stand, on the outer shore of the 
world, and looking back over the land which was 
before us a land of golden promise, see it lying 
behind us a land of bitterness and desolation, — or 
hear ringing in our ears a voice whose tones would 
find its echo in our own hearts : " Mene, Mene, 
Tekel, Upharsin ; God hath numbered thy king- 
dom, and finished it. Thou art weighed in the 
balance, and art found wanting." 

I see but one reasonable objection to taxation. 
" We are willing," it may be said, " to pour out 
of our abundance, or of our poverty, to put down 
the rebellion ; but we are not willing even to dole 
out our hard earnings to enrich dishonest contrac- 
tors, lazy clerks, grasping sutlers, wasteful Con- 
gress-men, and the whole herd of unclean beasts 
who feed and fatten at the public crib." But, in 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 381 

tlie first place, if we are going to wait for purity 
before we provide power, we may as well give 
up the whole matter at once. To suppose that 
the affairs of this nation are to be carried on ex- 
clusively by disinterested patriots, is to obey Dog- 
berry's injunction. We may lament the fact, but 
it must be recognized as a fact, and as a fact dis- 
posed of, that the world's work is, to a remarkable 
extent, done with unwashen hands. It would be 
a happy day for us that should see every man in 
our government a Washington, but that day will 
not dawn this many a year, and meanwhile we 
must do the best we can with our present material. 
Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles 
be gathered together. Wherever there is a possi- 
bility of making money without work, or wherever 
salary is disproportioned to service, there the mor- 
ally lame and the mentally lazy will inevitably 
congregate. Wherever a business is so vast that 
it must be managed by large masses of men, with 
the certainty of ample remuneration, with the con- 
tingency of perquisites, and a presumption of im- 
punity for unfaithfulness arising from the very 
magnitude of the work and the numbers of the 
workmen, there, until the Millennium, the great 
unemployed, the unlucky, the indolent, the shabby- 
genteel, the unpractical and the impracticable, 
Micawberian waiters for something to turn up, 
louno;ing heirs for whom the dead men's shoes are 
not yet emptied, and unjust stewards who cannot 



382 COUNTRY LIVING. 

dig, and are ashamed to beg, but not afraid to 
steal, will come up like a yoimg lion from the 
swellings of Jordan, with a paw for every contract, 
and a claw for every clerkship, and a maw for 
every salary that can be wrenched or wormed 
from the powers that be. Even with the best 
intentions on the part of those with whom rests the 
responsibility of selection, some ring-streaked and 
spotted souls will wriggle in and usurp the places 
that should be filled only by those who walk in 
white. Some dishonest and unscrupulous men 
will rankle there, — men who will feather their 
own nests, though they pluck their country callow 
to effect it ; — harpies that pollute what they can- 
not devour, — gulping down the very shew-bread 
from off the altar, — thrusting their three-pronged 
flesh-hooks even into the caldrons of sacrifice, 
and bringing thei'eby shame and dismay upon the 
whole priesthood. 

But let it not be forgotten that this is not a 
feature peculiar to our government. Such men 
there are in all countries, a disgrace to their age 
and to the race. Probably our ratio of rascal- 
age is not larger than that of any other nation. 
Probably it is smaller than most. This is surely 
consolatory. 

Then, also, it is evident that, after all, it is com- 
paratively a small part of our whole expenditure 
that is thus wasted, though it be large in the 
aggregate ; and in the working of all machinery, 
allowance must be made for friction. 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 383 

Tims much, supposing the evil to be irremedia- 
ble ; but it is not. There is no need of all this 
venalitv. The fact of its past existence furnishes 
no argument for its present toleration, and if the 
imminence of taxation shall rouse us to overthrow- 
it, taxation will be no disguised blessing. It is 
the duty of every man to file a complaint, and to 
follow it up. Let him insist that taxation and 
purification and retrenchment go hand in hand. 
When the burden of taxation falls, let the burden 
of corruption be lifted, and all burden will disap- 
pear. To which end, let every man take hold of 
the lever that is nearest to himself. If each one 
would turn on the water of cleansing to his own 
corner of this Augean stable, the work would soon 
be done ; and then, and meanwhile, let him keep 
a sharp lookout — careful, but not captious, watch- 
ful, not meddlesome — that the republic receive 
no harm at the hands of those servants wdiom his 
voice and vote helped to set in place. Tocqueville 
sagaciously says, that a government will be just 
as corrupt as the nation will let it be ; and if the 
virtuous sit quietly at home, and do nothing to 
preserve or reinstate public purity, they are un- 
faithful to their duty, and have no riglit to cast 
the first stone. 

As for retrenchment, there are a thousand ways 
in which something can be accomplished, and 
much will be accomplished if we all put our shoul- 
ders to the wheel. Cono-ress is showino; a faint 



384 COUNTRY LIVING. 

disposition to walk in tlie right path, and the 
disposition should by all means be encouraged 
and strengthened. The franking system exhibits 
symptoms of rapid demise, and there are many 
other systems there that will bear looking into, 
or rather that will not bear it, and should die the 
death. The office hours of the clerks of the de- 
partments are, I think, from nine A. M. to three 
P. M., and it is a current saying among them, 
that it is nine till it is ten, and three as soon as 
it becomes two ; and if the public work can be 
done with such application, or want of application, 
surely it can be done by fewer clerks, who should 
render exact service ; and the lowest salaries are 
$1,200 per annum. The salaries of our higher 
officers are not munificent compared with the in- 
come of the chief magistrates of other nations. 
The President is perhaps the worst-paid man in 
the country, but no salary can be any offset to the 
discharo;e of duties so onerous, and though I do 
not think " we the people " have the shadow of 
a right to ask for its reduction, yet, in this crisis, 
it seems to me that the moral effect of a voluntary 
surrender of a part of it would be so happy, that 
it would amply compensate for any self-denial that 
might be involved. (I trust, however, that Mr. 
Lincoln will not feel constrained by my suggestion. 
I certainly shall not press it to his embarrassment.) 
But what we want is that President, Congress, and 
people shall give a long pull, a strong pull, and a 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 385 

pull altogether, to get the nation out of the mire. 
Money, muscle, and mind are what we need. The 
muscle is on hand, the mind and money are in the 
country, and must be produced. Money we can 
all, or almost all, save and spare ; for nearly all 
of us live a great way above our necessities. I 
do not advocate penuriousness. I believe in fine 
houses, fine estates, fine horses, and fine clothes. 
I believe it is everybody's duty to live as elegantly 
as he can, consistently with his other duties. I do 
not believe that the God who made everything 
beautiful in its season, who painted the wing of 
the butterfly, and burnished the scales of the beetle, 
and tinted the petals of the rose, and pencilled the 
outlines of the hills, who ordered his temple to be 
made of the purest gold, the most precious wood, 
the most costly scarlet, — who everywhere delights 
to lavish magnificence, — I cannot believe that this 
Being is most appropriately worshipped by an un- 
couth and homespun life. But there is a beauty 
higher than speaks to the eye, and beautiful things 
are beautiful only as they converge to this higher 
beauty. There is nothing more stately than the 
human body, and he who disfigures it by abuse 
or neglect, is guilty of sin ; but more beautiful 
than Apollo is the soldier, lying face forward on 
the battle-field, grimed w^ith powder, torn with 
shell, smeared with blood, — since for a sacred 
cause he dared to die. So we may not only inno- 
cently, but laudably, adorn our houses with the 

17 Y 



386 COUNTRY LIVING. 

treasures of art and the wonders of skill, surround- 
ing ourselves with whatever, speaks to the eye or 
the ear of loveliness and grace ; but when, in or- 
der to do this, we sacrifice the soul to which they 
all minister, we rob God. We misuse his bounty. 
We utterly mistake the meaning of his gifts. 
They have failed to do their work for us. Instead 
of drawing us up higher, they have thrust us 
down lower. We are sensual, when we ought to 
be spiritual. We value means more than ends. 
We take the hints and signs of beauty for beauty 
itself. We put the incidents of life for its essence. 
And what shall it profit us though we gain the 
whole world and lose our inward worth ? When, 
on the other hand, we sacrifice these adventitious 
graces and glories that the soul which they grace 
and glorify may live, — that virtue and truth and 
justice may not want a man to stand before the 
Lord forever, — we show a just sense of the rela- 
tive value of things, and approve ourselves worthy 
to be the depositary of liberty for the world. 

So it irks me to hear such assertions as that a 
member of Congress, or any other man, cannot 
live in Washington, or any other city, on less 
than three thousand dollars a year. Cannot live ? 
Have we not classical authority for saying that 
men can not only live, but cultivate the muses, on 
a little oatmeal ? In land where corn is ten cents 
a bushel, and coal fifteen, is it to be said that a 
man must die of cold or hunger unless he has 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 387 

three thousand dollars a year ? It is absurd. He 
may not be able to give French dinners and cham- 
pagne suppers, and japonica parties, and to main- 
tain a style of corresponding expenditure ; but let 
him diminish his expenses. Let him put a knife 
to his throat if he be a man given to such appe- 
tites. When his country is struggling for life, is 
it any discredit to him to live narrowly for her 
sake ? Is it not rather a credit ? Does he not 
thereby give a pledge of his sincerity and his love ? 
What was generous livino; becomes heartless ex- 
travagance. What would be meanness is heroism. 
Was Washington ashamed to exhibit before the 
minister of the great and gay French court " that 
plain and simple manner of living which accords 
with the real interest and policy of men struggling 
under every difficulty for the attainment of the 
most inestimable blessing of life, liberty " ? Did 
Luzerne, dining off the shoulder of bacon, the 
almost imperceptible greens, and the contingent 
apple-pie, conceive a low idea of the cause whose 
champion could thus, for its sake, deny himself the 
luxuries wliich fortune had laid at his feet? And 
if, when the public good demands a reduction of 
any salary, its recipient profess himself unable to 
live on less, let him consider whether his life is 
absolutely essential to the nation. 

" I trust we have ■within our realme 
Five hundred as good as hee." 

Of course, retrenchment should be accomplished 



388 COUNTRY LIVING. 

wisely and justly, not injudiciously and indiscrimi- 
nately. There is that withholdeth more than is 
meet, but it tendeth to poverty. Let the people 
insist that abuses shall be abolished, mistakes rec- 
tified, extravagance discouraged, dishonesty pun- 
ished. Let them be scrupulously honorable and 
careful and economical in all their private meas- 
ures, effectually frowning down whosoever, in pub- 
lic or private, loveth and maketh a lie, and then 
welcome taxation ! welcome self-denial ! welcome 
poverty, and hardship, and suffering, and death, 
if, peradventure, the Lord will establish upon us 
the work of our hands. 

Civil war cannot be so fatal to a nation as many 
have painted it. Cruel and bloody, indeed, must 
be the fight when brothers fall to blows ; but Eng- 
land has thriven on such warfare. Her soil has 
been drenched again and again with the blood of 
her children. For thirty years the white roses 
met the red in deadly conflict. It was eighteen 
years from the battle of Edgehill to the coronation 
of Charles the Second, and to-day, in all the arts 
of peace and war, England stands foremost among 
the nations. When mad clouds clash in the sum- 
mer sky, there is fierce strife, — the flash of death- 
dealing lightnings and the terrific cannonade of 
the thunder, — but the earth looks up all the 
fresher, the air sweeps round it all the clearer 
afterwards. So we will hope that the storm shall 
be as a savor of life unto life. The bolts must 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 389 

fall, yet our moral atmosphere shall be pureed 
of its miasms, and our beloved land bloom with 
a yet unknown freshness, in the light of the Sun 
of Righteousness. 

" Glory to God in the highest, and on earth 
peace, good-will toward men," sang the host of 
heaven pouring through the pearly gates of the 
Celestial City, and floating over the hill-tops of 
Jud«a to proclaim to a ransomed earth the glad 
tidings of her redemption, — the birth of the Son 
of God. 

But when the fulness of time had come, and 
the child that was born in the city of David had 
grown into his manhood, and great multitudes fol- 
lowed him, what words fell on the listening ears 
of his disciples, whom he was commissioning to go 
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel ? " Think 
not that I am come to send peace on earth ; I 
came not to send peace, but a sword." 

Was then the sono; of the ano;els but a sono; of 

o o C 

sirens, or did the Saviour Christ repent or de- 
spair of his Divine mission, and in anger resolve 
to cut down the rebellious people whose hearts 
were unsoftened to his love ? Not so. James, a 
servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
has bridged the chasm, and in one short sentence 
showed us how the stern declaration of Christ con- 
sorts with the resounding jubilance of the heavenly 
hosts : " First pure, then peaceable." 

So the clash and clangor of arms that suddenly 



390 COUNTRY LIVING. 

cleft the usual din of our busy streets, and rent the 
silences of our remote hills, and ruffled the quiet- 
ness of our Puritan Sabbath, was the Gospel — 
the good spell, the good story — of peace, rendered 
in a different, harsher, but not less emphatic lan- 
guage than that used by the angels. The sword 
cuts, through the dense forest and the tangled 
undergrowth, a highway for the Prince of Peace ; 
the " feverish lips " of cannon thunder out the 
preparation for the Gospel of peace, and miglity 
men of war herald the millennial year. 

Never has our country seen a more glorious 
day than that which dawned but now, blood- 
red in the east, but radiant with white brilliance 
in the high noon which surely follows. It is the 
day which the Lord hath made ; we will rejoice 
and be glad in it. It is the day which prophets 
and kings desired to see, but have not seen. It is 
a day so pregnant with grand possibilities, that it 
were better for a man that a millstone were 
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned 
in the depths of the sea, than that he should, by 
an ill-timed forbearance, or a culpable negligence, 
or an unmanly timidity, or a criminal love of 
peace, turn back its near-approaching chariot, 
and veil it again in the shades of a once-dis- 
pelled night. Thrice and four times accursed 
shall he be who cries peace when there is no 
peace ! We feared, as we entered into the cloud, 
but we have heard a voice from out the cloud. 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 391 

saying, " This is my beloved Son," and though 
Ave can see those divine hneaments hut darkly, 
we fear no longer. The cup which our Father 
has given us, shall we not drink of it ? There 
may be bitter drops, but we know that love has 
mingled it, and life lies in the draught. 

Many a lover of his country has sought to allay 
the fierce excitement and prevent its culmination in 
blows, not for his own sake, not for his country's 
sake alone, but for the sake of the world ; some 
with the blush of shame, some with the tear of 
pity, some with the sigh of regret. " What Avill 
the world say ? " has been often asked, and oftener 
thought. What will the despotisms say, to whom 
we have been hitherto a reproach and a terror ? 
Where shall the struggling peoples look when the 
star that has shone upon them for a hope and a 
guide goes out in darkness ? But take courage. 
The star has not yet gone out in darkness, and 
has no thought of going. Those who sorroAv, 
and those who exvilt over our downfall, are alike 
premature, for we are not down yet by a great 
deal. On the contrary, we have been gradually, 
but continually, coming up higher, advancing, with 
many retrograde steps it is true, but with steady, 
average progress, to an elevation whence, looking 
down on the smiling valleys that lie .behind, and 
the grim abysses that yawn before, we can yet, 
for the right's sake, with blanched cheek it may 
be, but with unfaltering step, " march right on, 



392 COUNTRY LIVING. 

content and bold." We could not always have 
done it. Not every people can do it now. 

As for the world, it cannot judge us. It is not 
in a position to judge us. It has had no precedent. 
England, which knows more about us than any 
other nation, — which has become familiarized 
by constant intercourse and a common language, 
and endeared by similar aims, family quarrels, 
and the strong tie of blood, — even England 
cannot form a clear and accurate conception of 
our position. It is the most difficult thing in 
the world for her to gain a tolerable knowledge 
of our geogi'aphy, much less of our political and 
social institutions, their bearings and necessities. 
When intelligent English travellers go home and 
write books about America, in which they put 
Boston and Georgia side by side in the same 
class, either as both cities or both States, how 
can the rank and file of civihzation be thought 
capable of judging what the reefs are on which 
we have struck? It is undoubtedly true that 
a very large majority of those who are watching 
the progress of our struggle from abroad, watch 
it as the trial of Republicanism. If we go down, 
many brave hearts panting for freedom will 
throb heavily, and wicked eyes, watching over 
tyrannies, will gloat on our destruction ; but it 
is not Republicanism, not even our Republican- 
ism, that is on trial for life, as people will pres- 
ently learn. If the nation should die to-day, 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 393 

(which it wont,) our experience of self-govern- 
ment, so far from being a failure, would be a 
signal success. It has given us near a century 
of freedom and happiness. Under it we have 
grown from a little one to be a great nation. 
It has been to us a blessing, and only a blessing. 
It has not only ministered to our material pros- 
perity, but it has educated our people to a de- 
gree of self-respect and self-control, which, low 
as it seems at times and in places, disagreeable 
as it often is in its manifestations, is yet, in 
both quantity and quality, unparalleled among 
the nations. What other community would have 
held itself on the brink of civil war as we did ? 
Two forces, — one drawing itself up in battle- 
array, the other quietly pursuing the avocations 
of peace, — one dishonestly appropriating to it- 
self for hostile purposes the vast wealth which 
belongs to both, the other half unconscious, and 
half apathetic when conscious, and, even when 
aroused, contenting itself with remonstrance, and 
held in check, through its loyalty to law, by 
a power which it despised, — day after day, 
week after week, month after month, stood face 
to face and held their peace. It would seem as 
if a rash act, a palpable blunder, an innocent 
mistake, might at any moment hurl them into a 
bloody embrace ; rash acts, blunders, and mis- 
takes there were in lamentable profusion ; feel- 
ing ran high ; hearts swelled with indignation ; 
17* 



394 COUNTRY LIVING. 

each felt that the other Avas trampling on his 
dearest rights, (at any rate each said so, and we 
know that ive spoke truly,) and we flamed up to 
a white heat of passion ; but there was no out- 
break. And shall it be said of such men that 
they are not fit to govern themselves ? They 
have governed themselves, and, by their cool- 
ness and patience and wisdom, have shown that 
they were eminently fit to govern themselves. 
If the Republic falls, nevermore to rise, let no 
despot's hand point to the place where it stood, 
as a warning to future republics. Nothing in 
its life will have become it like the leavino; it. 
No circumstance of its life hitherto can so 
strongly prove the inherent strength and dig- 
nity, not of man simply, but of men, as this 
present sti'uggle, even if it should be unto 
death. The long forbearance of the people that 
would not believe in treason and matricide ; the 
simultaneous and spontaneous uprising of a people 
when treason and matricide spoke out in words 
that could no longer be misunderstood ; the sud- 
den tempest of love and courage and sacred fury 
that swept through a people when it saw the ark 
of its liberties endangered, — all this shall go 
down to the future, and men shall rejoice and 
tyrants shall tremble at the memory of our Re- 
public, even should it be only a memory. 

No, the struggle which convulses the nation 
does not arise from evils which inhere in its sys- 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 395 

tern of government, and develop naturally from its 
workings. Our Republic is attacked from with- 
out, not from within. The rank vine which 
twines its tightening coils around her sturdy 
trunk and lusty limbs is no parasite, but a foul 
foreio'u growth. If has indeed struck its roots 
into the same soil, and spread out its tendrils to 
the same breezes, but the one is a vile and short- 
lived weed, and the other a tree of life, whose 
leaves are for the healing of the nations. The 
contest arises rather from tlie purity and power of 
Republicanism. A form of government less an- 
tagonistic to human bondage might longer hold 
on the even tenor of its way, but Republicanism 
is so founded on the dignity of man, the rights of 
man, the sacredness of man, that it cannot exist 
even with a vestige of despotism. It must have 
free course to run and be glorified, or it must stop 
running altogether. We have an anomalous civ- 
ilization. On the one side freedom in its purest 
form, on the other, slavery in its purest ; and the 
genius of the one is so divei'se from that of the 
other, that the two cannot coexist. All the forces 
of the one spring upward to light and air. All 
the forces of the other drag downward to dark- 
ness and death. It was the inconsistencies be- 
tween their own struggle for their rights and a 
refusal to grant the same rights to their Negroes, 
that led our fathers to banish slavery from New 
England. But slavery, banished from New Eng- 



396 COUNTRY LIVING. 

land, throve in a sunnier clime, side by side with 
the freedom of the austere North. Now the har- 
vest is ripe. Let the mowers whet their scythes, 
and the reapers put in their sickles, for one or the 
other shall surely fall. Multitudes, multitudes in 
the valley of decision. For the day of the Lord 
is near in the valley of decision. 

Is this a day for a man to afflict his soul ? to 
bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread 
sackcloth and ashes under him ? 



Though " it was but a dream, yet it lightened my despair 

When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right, 

That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease, 

The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height, 

Nor America's one sole god be the millionnaire. 

No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace 

Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note. 

" And as months ran on and rumor of battle grew, 
' It is time, it is time. passionate heart,' said I, 
(For I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and true,) 

It is time, it is time ! I wake to the higher aims 

Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold. 

And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames, 

Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told; 

And hail once more to the banner of battle unrolled ! 

Though many a light shall darken, and many shall weep 

For those that are crushed in the clash of jarring claims. 

Yet God's just wrath shall be wreaked on a giant liar; 

And many a darkness into the light shall leap. 

And shine in the sudden making of splendid names, 

And noble thought be freer under the sun, 

And the heart of a people beat with one desire; 

For the peace that I deemed no peace is over and done. 

By the deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress flames 

The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire. 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 397 

" Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind, 
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still. 
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind; 
It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill; 
I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind, 
I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assigned." 

In summing up the pros and cons of this war, 
the deterioration of the men who are engaged in 
it, and the general backshding of society, are usu- 
ally set down on the per contra side. It is taken 
for granted that morality and religion will suffer, 
both with those who go and with those who stay. 
And having thus put matters in train, and given 
everybody to understand what is expected of 
him, and that if he sins it won't be very much his 
fault, seeing it is the prescribed thing to do under 
the circumstances, it is very likely soldiers and 
society will answer our expectations, and duly de- 
teriorate according to the statute for such case 
made and provided. 

It seems to me, however, that all this is entirely 
unnecessary. I see no conclusive reason why our 
men should come back to us any worse men than 
they went away, or why they should find us any 
worse men than they left us. It seems to me, on 
the contrary, that this is the time of all times 
when we should expect, and lay our plans for, and 
strive to bring about, a great revival of religion, — 
such a revival as we have never yet felt or heard 
of, so that even a whole nation shall be born into 
the kingdom of heaven in a day. 



398 COUNTRY LIVING. 

It does not pi'ove anything to the purpose, that 
wars always liave been attended Avith and fol- 
lowed by demoralization. It is a long lane that 
has no turning. America is not a land of prece- 
dents. She is herself an unprecedented nation. 
She has never scrupled to turn over a leaf because 
it was new, and there is no reason why she should 
now. If wars always have been demoralizing, it is 
high time they should stop being so, and there 
never was a better occasion to change this thing 
than the present. There is nothing in the origin 
or aim of this war to demoralize any one. No- 
body has got to slur over his convictions, that his 
patriotism may go scot-free. Nobody is required 
to forget his conscience in his country. Nobody 
is forced to merge his Christianity in his citizen- 
ship. Conscience and patriotism, right and might, 
all march under the same banner, and fight on the 
same side. It is such a war, as has, perhaps, 
never been seen outside of " Paradise Lost." It 
is a rebellion of wicked weakness against righteous 
strength. It is slavery, ignorance, cruelty, barba- 
rism, writhing under the iron tramp, and striking 
its fangs into the mailed heel, of freedom, knowl- 
edge, and universal human progress. Every man 
and boy who goes down to battle can go in the 
name of the Lord. It is no personal animosity, 
no sectional jealousy, no party pique, that should 
whet the sword, and clean the rifle, and nerve the 
arm. A great cause is endangered, a great princi- 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 399 

pie is attacked. The lieart of humanity is struck 
at, the battle is for the workl. 

And who are they that go down to the battle ? 
Not, as a general thing, beardless boys, with habits 
and principles yet in the gristle ; not the off-scour- 
ing of soci^y mainly, though that vindoubtedly 
drizzles in to a considerable extent ; but men with 
mothers and wives and children at home, — men 
who have been educated in our free schools, who 
have worshipped God in our sanctuaries, who have 
voted in our town-houses, and taken newspapers, 
and paid taxes, and tilled farms, and built engines, 
and talked politics, and heard lectures, and given 
parties. They are men who have had their posi- 
tion and reputation in society and church ; and 
because they have left mother, and child, and 
church, and shop, are they to begin forthwith to 
swear, and drink, and turn vagabond, robber, and 
roue ? Is this the strength of our boasted free 
institutions ? Have we been trained to a morality 
that must be laid aside with the civilian's dress, 
and is vice the prerogative of regimentals ? Is our 
religion a tv/o-year-old child, to fly at the sight of 
a uniform ? Is our virtue so weak that it must be 
bandaged, and bolstered, and coddled with herb- 
tea and water-gruel, to keep the breath of life in it, 
and the moment it is let out into the rough-and- 
tumble of the world, it droops and dies? Then, 
verily, we may as well have no virtue at all, and 
we have made much ado about nothino;. It has 



400 COUNTRY LIVING. 

always been our boast and pride tliat we raised 
men. It seems now that we have turned out 
nothing but overgrown boys. Liberty, education, 
self-control, individual responsibility, are the birth- 
right of American freemen, and the upshot of it 
is, that when they are put to the test^they cannot 
stand it ! Thrown upon their manhood for three 
months, or three years, they have not sail enough 
to keep going, nor ballast enough to keep steady ! 
Then let our free institutions go by the board. If, 
after near a century of working, they can show no 
better result than this, away with them. Despot- 
ism could hardly do worse. Let the war go, too. 
Let Jeff Davis come, and Floyd, and slavery, and 
stealing, and the age of pewter and pinchbeck 
and all uncleanness. A few rods more or less 
deep in the slough of infamy will not make much 
difference. Let us write on the door-posts of our 
churches and our school-houses, " Mene, Mene, 
Tekel, Upharsin," and then lock the doors, and 
board up the windows, and begin new. 

It is not so. I do not believe one word of it. 
The eighty years' trial has not proved such an 
abortion. The mountain has not labored to bring 
forth such a mouse. I would not so slander our 
institutions and the brave men who have gone forth 
to defend them. Our soldiers are not mere ma- 
chines, working accordino; to the hands of the con- 
ductor, though they are that ; they are not misera- 
ble conscripts, drafted and dragged into a quarrel 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 401 

of which they have no knowledge, and in which 
they liave no interest ; they are no vain and empty 
brao-o-arts, chitchino; after a vagne, o-htterino; worth- 
less gloxy. They are men, and soldiers because 
they are men. They are soldiers of their own free 
will and choice, — soldiers of opinion and senti- 
ment and settled purpose. They are fighting be- 
cause they have decided that it is right to fight. 
They understand what they are fighting for, and 
what they are fighting against, and when they are 
going to stop. For a specific purpose, for a limited 
time, and the better to gain their objects, they have 
wisely and freely delegated the partial control of 
their movements to certain leaders ; but they are, 
every man of them, a sovereign, wrestling for a 
kingdom which is his by divine right, and which 
usurpers are trying to wrest from him by infernal 
wrono;. He is fighting for his children, an^l his 
children's children, to the third and fourth gener- 
ations. He stands in the van of a vast nation. 
Behind him is a great multitude, whom no man 
can number, — men and w^omen and little children, 
with eager eyes fixed steadily on him, — silent souls 
of the coming ages, awaiting from his hands their 
doom, — home, hope, happiness, all that makes life 
desirable and heaven possible ; — above him, the 
heavenly hosts bending over the battlements of 
the Celestial City, and hell from beneath moved 
to meet him at his coming. Is this a day for a 
man to relax his hold on truth and righteousness ? 



402 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Is this a situation that should tempt men to sloth 
and wickedness and riot ? Are these the men that 
shall be found wanting when weighed in such a 
balance ? 

" I am ashamed through all my nature," when 
I hear this talk of demoralization. Let us not for 
a moment admit the possibility of it. Let us not 
pave the way to vice by announcing that we expect 
it, and don't let us expect it. Let us not put up 
sign-boards and finger-posts to ruin, and map out 
the country for travellers ? Let no soldier — let 
no Massachusetts soldier especially — fancy that 
his State will make a mock at sin. She will be 
lenient and tender and forgiving and considerate, 
but not indifferent. If he forgets or forswears his 
manhood, he is no son of hers. She does not nour- 
ish and bring up recreants. Let him remember 
that Svery profane and obscene word loosens the 
bond of love and sympathy between him and her, 
and diminishes his claim to her respect. If he 
steals, or lies, or drinks himself drunk, or in any 
way approves himself a villain, he disgraces her. 
He shames the mother who bore him, and is by so 
much a bastard, and not a son. Let him not think 
that, because he has bared his breast to bullet and 
bayonet, he shall cover the multitude of his sins. 
She will give him praise for bravery, but she will 
by no means clear him of guilt. Brute courage 
shall not save his soul from death, and the time is 
past when it might save his memory from shame. 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 403 

Watchful, if loving eyes are upon him, North or 
South, in cottage or tent, Massachvisetts expects 
every man to do his duty. If he is a traitor to 
that, let him not suppose that his death will bring 
any loss. However afflictive it may be to his fam- 
ily, however disastrous to himself, his State can- 
not mourn him. She has no tears for such as he. 
Sombre hearse and nodding plume, prayer and 
dirge and funeral pomp, there may be, for, though 
her blood runs base in his veins, it is- still her 
blood ; but for the heart-felt sorrow, and sore re- 
gret, and bitter lamentation, that rise to heaven 
when " a good man meets his fate," there shall be 
a sense of relief and quiet acquiescence. The air 
is purer by so much as his foul breath polluted it. 

I know that a great deal of scum has probably 
floated southward in the army ; but, if reports 
approximate the truth, there must be a greater 
deal of good, pure sap underneath. Many of the 
unthinking and unprincipled are doubtless there, 
but there must be a sreat number of those who 
have always had the credit of sober thought and 
guiding principle ; and it is the nature of matter 
that, when light and darkness meet, darkness must 
give way. A pretty pass things have come to, if 
a lamp excuses itself from shining because it is in 
a dark room ! What is the good of having a 
lamp, if it can shine only in the daylight ? True, 
light has its limit, but one little candle can throw 
its beams very far in a naughty world ; and I 



404 COUNTRY LIVING. 

should think, according to accounts, that there are 
church-members enough in the army to Christian- 
ize the workL Now let them show whether the 
great revival of 1857 did anything. Let them 
show whether praying and Christian profession 
mean anything. If they do, every one of these 
men should be a missionary. He should not only 
keep himself pure, but he should be a disinfectant. 
All around him the air should be sweet and the 
sky clear. Let his good works be manifest, that 
his Father in heaven may be glorified. Never, 
never had men such a charge to keep as have our 
Christian soldiers. They are emphatically the 
Church militant. They have laid aside every 
weight of business and affection and ease ; let 
them lay aside the sins which easily beset them, 
and they may become apostles and martyrs. " Dieu 
et mon droit,'" " Christo et Uodesice,''^ — every watch- 
word that has quivered on the lips of saint and 
hero, and is tremulous still with the love and faith 
and tears and blood that it has embodied, — may 
tremble on his lips, and find them not unworthy. 
If he fall, he falls from a greater height to a lower 
depth. Let him remember that New England is 
on trial in his person. Though every other soldier 
should grovel among beasts, his mother State bids 
him among the rest, in shape and gesture proudly 
eminent, stand like a tower. Though all others 
be faithless, let him be alone faithful. Whoever 
denies the Lord, she bids him not deny the Lord. 



OUR CIVIL WAR. . 405 

She sends forth her sons to be 

" A glorious company, the flower of men, 
To serve as model for the mighty world, 
And be the fair beginning of a time. 
She bids them lay their hands in hers, and swear 
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ, 
To i-ide abroad redressing human wrongs, 
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it. 
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity. 
Not only to keep down the base in man, 
But teach high thought, and amiable words, 
And courtliness, and the desire of fame. 
And love of truth, and all that makes a man." 

So fulfilHng her behests, forever green shall be 
the laurel on his brow, or, if God so will it, the 
turf upon his grave. 

All this our soldiers will do and be, God and 
ourselves helping them. I do not believe we shall 
injure or discourage them, by putting the standard 
too high. If they are the men we take them to 
be, they will rise to the emergency. They will 
justify the confidence we repose in them, and mag- 
nify their office. 

What is our duty ? First, insist on their hav- 
ing plenty of good food. Hunger is a great de- 
moralizer. Secondly, insist on their having good 
clothes to wear. Rags are the ally of the Devil. 
Thirdly, provide them with good reading. It is 
the idle hands into which Satan puts mischief. 
This is more directly in our power than the first 
two. Those we can only attain by roundabout 
measures, by furnishing money which must go 



406 COUNTRY LIVING. 

through a circuitous channel, and by sharply 
supervising the supervisors, at the risk of being 
often in the wrong ourselves, but with the certain 
result of inducino; a more thoroucfh attention than 
if we were indifferent. Government, however, 
supplies no ration of books, and the soldiers must 
look directly to the people. Let them not look in 
vain. Fourthly, we should stop prophesying evil 
concerning them. Prophecies often work their 
own fulfilment. Fifthly, we should be good our- 
selves, and this is of the fii'st importance. If we 
are at any one time under any stronger bonds 
than at any other to do justly, to love mercy, and 
to walk humbly before God, it is now. If any 
exigency can call out repentance and faith and 
love, it is this. If any terrors of the law can per- 
suade men, if any judgments can avail to turn our 
feet to the testimonies of the Lord, it is the terrors 
and the judgments that are abroad to-day. Our 
sin entered into the world, and the death of our 
beloved ones, who have been smitten down in the 
beautiful promise of their youth, in the glorious 
ripeness of their manhood, came by that sin. Sin, 
sins, are the remote and the immediate cause of 
these calamities. Some of the ramifications we 
can ti'ace, others subdivide and disappear from our 
view, but not from God's. We pandered to in- 
iquity. We have again and again clipped our 
birthright, and sold the fragments for messes 
of very watery pottage. We have lightly es- 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 407 

teemed our heritao-e of freedom. We have made 
us idols of gold, and silver, and bank-stock, and 
Yankee ingenuity, and material progress. We 
have waxed fat, and kicked weak nations, and 
ranted against strong ones, and exalted our own 
to the heavens. We have strained out without 
much ado the few little gnats that strayed into 
our foreign wine, and have swallowed, without 
wincing, the heads of camels that swam in our 
home-brewed ale. We have protected our citi- 
zens abroad, not so much from the sacred mother- 
hood of country, or a chivalrous and Christian 
magnanimity, as from a tumid pride ; for where 
our citizens have received infinitely worse treat- 
ment within our OAvn domains, we have held our 
peace. Our reputation before the world was not 
at stake ; it was on.ly a family matter, so we 
hushed it up. As a people we have minded our 
personal affairs to the neglect of national. We 
have betrayed the trust which God reposed in us. 
We have been false to the blood of our fathers 
shed in battle. We have ignominiously suffered 
the nation's weal to be managed by unworthy 
hands. Becoming disgusted with the trickery, 
and venality, and selfishness, and sordidness of 
politics, we have given politics over to knaves, till 
the A'Cry word politician has become a term of 
contumely. Instead of going into the den, and 
clearing it out, we have stood oflF, and, like Pilate, 
washed our hands, as if to forego action was to 



408 COUXTRY LIVIXG. 

forego responsibility. And here we are. Slack- 
ing sail, sleeping at the helm, neglecting our 
soundings, we find ourselves among the breakers. 
Sowing to the wind, we reap the whu'lwind. The 
chastisement of our guilty peace is upon us. Now 
let us change all this. Patriotism demands that 
every man, and woman, cleanse his soul from sin. 
A nation is no nobler than its individuals. Every 
man who cheats, or slanders, or steals, adds to the 
aggregate guilt of the nation, helps to put it be- 
yond the pale of God's protection, and is so far a 
traitor. Every voter who neglects to vote helps 
to put his country into evil hands, by not exerting 
liis utmost to put it into good hands, and is so far 
a traitor, for 

" On life's current he who drifts 
Is one with him who rows or saUs.'' 

Let every man see to it that the sin of the na- 
tion lies no longer at his door, that his iniquities 
shall not draw down the wrath of God upon it. 
Let every man, by his own upright dealings, 
by his own unblemished manhood, show convin- 
cingly that he is on the side of God and his coun- 
try. This is the way in which things ought to 
■work, and this will effectually dispose of demoral- 
ization at home. 

The events of the last few months have earned 
us forward by centuries. It is like one of those 
great convulsions that mark the geologic ages. 
After each upheaval, the earth clothed herself 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 409 

with new creations, each higher than the last. 
She never went back on one day to the rude 
organizations which were the glory of the preced- 
ing day. So we, owing to this great fissure in our 
prosperity, this great change in our moral atmos- 
phere, have to adjust ourselves to new conditions. 
We shall press towards the mark for the prize of a 
higher calling. We owe to God grander lives, 
holier hearts, than we owed him last year. 

the gloiy of tliis new-born freedom I O 
this splendid rebound from servile acquiescence ! 
To have thrown oif the intolerable burden ! To 
cower no longer before an overshadowing evil I 
To rise up disenthralled ! The green withes that 
bound us snapped asunder at one blast of ear- 
nest resolution, and we walk joyfully, unfettered. 
The thing which we greatly feared is come upon 
us, and lo it is bursting out with good. That 
fearful looking for is over. The terrible evils, war, 
secession, disunion, that have been impending so 
long, are here, and it is a joy to meet them face to 
face like a man. We know now what their grim 
features are like, what their boasted power is. We 
can grapple with them now in unrelaxing death- 
gripe, and we feel an added strength with every 
effort. The very struggle has a stern delight. 
The very consciousness of fighting for the long- 
oppressed righteousness is an inspiration. If by 
any sacrifice we can atone for the past, if any 
efi:brts can make restitution, they shall not be 



410 COUNTRY LIVING. 

wanting. God accept the penance and forgive 
the sin. 

Here then we stand on vantaoje-cpround to do 
battle with sin. We have the prestige of victory. 
Our consciences are aroused. Our moral sensibili- 
ties have partially recovered tone. Now strike 
while the iron is hot. Now for great awakenincrs, 
revivals, not of emotions merely, but of religion, 
morality, and virtue. Let Christians bestir them- 
selves, and the day is theirs. God's occasions are 
floating by. As we have dealt with one sin, so let 
us deal with every sin, — meet it, throttle it, away 
with it. 

It must be so. It will be so if Christians do 
their duty. With nations, as with individuals, the 
cross leads to the crown. Suffering is Heaven's 
agent. It is coming out of great tribulation that 
we shall wash our robes and make them white in 
the blood of the Lamb. This sickness is not unto 
death. It is to eternal life, if we will have it so. 
Trouble is perhaps an indispensable agent in the 
formation of character, and we ought to come out 
of this trouble like gold seven times tried. We 
ought to be a greater and a wiser nation, a nobler 
and an honester people, better men, better Chris- 
tians. We ought to develop those heroic virtues 
which spring only in troublous times. We shall 
do it if Christians Mnll be strong, and quit them- 
selves like men. 

We have every encouragement to eifort. All 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 411 

hearts are stirred and softened. The air is full of 
the voice of prayer. Christian mothers pray now 
as they never prayed before, and mothers that 
never prayed before pray now. The tens of 
thousands gone from us went from homes. They 
were husbands, brothers, sons, the centres of 
liappy circles, the light of tender eyes. Love 
filled their knapsacks, and bade them farewell. 
Love could even make their hearts strong with 
words of good cheer ; but* love cannot turn aside 
the swift lead or 'the flashing steel. God alone is 
great. He is love's last, as he should be love's 
first resort. When love can do no more, love 
turns to God with earnest prayers and tears. 
Every son in the field can be wrapped around 
with an atmosphere of prayer. Every mother will 
pray for her son, and because there are some there 
who have no mothers to pray for them, let every 
mother pray for all the motherless, and because 
every man who fights for our country belongs to 
us all, let all pray for all. Let no soldier be able 
to say or to feel, " No man cares for my soul or 
body." Let the lines between God and us be 
kept constantly open. Pray that our soldiers and ' 
our citizens may be true to their cause, may be 
kept from evil ways, may wax valiant in fight, 
invincible in virtue. And this praying spirit 
should not be suffered to run to waste. Let it, 
from an emotion, be hardened into a principle, 
a habit. Let it be penetrative and aggressive. 



412 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Let all sorrowful Iiearts be gently led to Christ, if 
they do not know the way thither. Let the tender 
promises of his Gospel fall like dew upon desolate 
souls. Let our churches and our prayer-meetings 
be places where grief can find consolation, where 
love shall find sympathy ; ignorance, instruction ; 
loneliness, society ; discouragement, hope ; repent- 
ance, assistance ; and the feeblest germ of good, 
that dew and rain and sunshine which shall make 
it spring up and bear fruit an hundred-fold. 

Let us be mindful of the bodily and spiritual 
welfare of those who are gone out fi'om us, and 
let them constantly feel that we are mindful of it, 
that no forgetfulness or negligence of ours give 
them excuse, or occasion, or temptation to falter. 
Let us be equally mindful of those at home, re- 
membering that we are all children of a common 
Father. Let us keep ourselves pure. Let us 
pray without ceasiiig. Let us do with our might, 
and this affliction shall work out for us a far more 
exceeding and eternal weight of glory. We shall 
go' on from strength to strength, till in all, and 
through all, and over all, the Lord God omnipo- 
tent reigneth. Hallelujah ! 

It should continually be kept in mind for our 
consolation, that this war is a consequence, and not 
a cause. It is tlie conclusion, not the commence- 
ment of a series. It is accepted, not initiated. 
It is recuperative, not destructive, I do not, of 
course, mean to say that, in the Divine plan, it 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 413 

may not work largely as a cause ; I speak of the 
fact as it presents itself to us. Florence Nightin- 
gale says that all disease is more or less a repara- 
tive process, an effort of nature to remedy a pro- 
cess of poisoning, or of decay, which has taken 
place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand, 
unnoticed. So this war is but the subsequent of 
disease. We may not survive, but it is not the 
war that Avill kill us, but what has preceded the 
war. The disease was in our blood. War is but 
the reaction of our sound humanity against it. So 
long as we went on peacefully, we were heaping 
up wrath against the day of wrath. The war is 
only saying to the disease, " Thus far shalt thou 
go, and no farther." 

They, therefore, who lament it as barbaric, hea- 
then, a relic of paganism, are not wise. It is all 
that. War is always that. An appeal to force is 
always the resort of savage, immature natures. 
But the war does not make us savages. It only 
reveals the fact that we are savages, — a thing 
which it behooves us to know. The war is not 
a going back. We were back before. We have 
never been forward. It is true, we thought we 
were. We fondly believed ourselves in the van of 
civilization and Christianity, and it may have been 
so ; but civilization and Christianity were not so 
far advanced as we thought. This war shows us 
where we were, and we cry out as if it had put us 
there. On the contrary, it has not only not re- 



414 COUNTRY LIVING. 

tarded us, but it has given us a good lift forward. 
When we come out of it, if we come out at all, 
we shall be a great deal farther on than we ever 
were before. There will be deterioration in detail, 
but we shall be on higher ground, with firmer feet, 
clearer vision, stouter hearts, wiser heads. Agri- 
culture, manufacture, and commerce may be ci'ip- 
pled, but life will be purified and energized. We 
shall be greatly improved by being distilled. 

What we have to fear in this war is not rebel 
batteries, or foreign bulletins, but God's sover- 
eignty. Providence is on the side of the heaviest 
battalions only when the heaviest battalions are on 
the side of Providence. Nothing has yet been 
revealed in the ranks of our opponents, actual or 
possible, which should dishearten us. So far as 
anything we have to fight against is concerned, I 
do not see that we need anticipate anything but 
ultimate, and perhaps not very distant success. 
But what I fear is, that more is meant than meets 
the ear, or eye, or pulse of the great body of the 
people. I tremble when — and only when — I 
remember that God is just. The woe that I dread 
does not threaten us from the South, nor from 
over the sea, but from the justice, the inexorable- 
ness, of God. He is a sovereign. His broken 
laws must be appeased. Who can stand in the 
day of his anger ? I fear lest we have sinned so 
deeply, that he will hurl against us the thunder- 
bolts of his wrath, till we be utterly consumed. 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 415 

It is not only the sins of the past, but of the pres- 
ent, that rise up in judgment against us. It is not 
only slavery, and the vices which it engenders and 
occasions, for which we must give account, but an 
unclean spirit, whose name is Legion, who is prey- 
ing upon our integrity. We have abused the good 
gifts of Heaven. We have accounted the blood 
of our covenant an unholy thing, and have done 
despite to the spirit of grace. Liberty has grown 
to license on our hands. Loyalty has given place 
to treachery. Our democracy is rampant and 
reckless. Our free press is blatant and bloody. 
Our free speech seems sometimes to have grown 
idiotic. Our enterprise runs mad. Proofs mul- 
tiply daily. The course pursued by some of our 
newspapers is almost enough to make one sigh for 
a single hour of good, thorough Austrian despot- 
ism. Love of country, fear of death, honor, pru- 
dence, delicacy, sense, seem to be swallowed up in 
the desire to see, or to hear, or to tell some new 
thinff. Nothino; is too gross for our greedv ears. 
Dinner-table talk is spread out with Boswellian 
minuteness on a daily newspaper, and the propri- 
etor thinks it is a feather in his cap. Some fly of 
a Congressman chances to hear a Cabinet conver- 
sation, and, with an itch for immortality, hops 
straightway into the House of Representatives, 
and twitters it all out. An exposed place turns 
up near Washington, through which a hostile 
army might safely and speedily march to our hurt, 



416 COUNTRY LIVING. 

and anon a dolt turns up alongside to proclaim it. 
It is no matter that the information maj enlighten 
rebel brains as well as ours. He who can tell a 
piece of news is the man for the times, even if we 
smart for it afterwards. If anybody can, no mat- 
ter how, find out anything, no matter what, his 
first duty is to run and tell of it, no matter to 
whom. The possession of news seems to give a 
factitious importance. He who can worm himself 
into the inside of anything, and then turn it wrong 
side out, is a hero. It would seem as if holding 
one's tongue were a deadly sin. The gossiping 
propensities of village sewing-societies have long 
been the theme of sarcastic comment ; but sew- 
ing-societies and female tea-drinkings are deaf 
mutes, compared with the great Gab Club into 
which American society seems to have resolved 
itself. 

The war has also developed an equal inability 
or disinclination in our people to mind their own 
business, and let other people's alone. Civil fin- 
gers do not pry into the military arcanum quite as 
much as they did before the 21st of July, 1861. 
Then we were carrying on the war swimmingly, 
knowing a great deal more about it than General 
Scott, marching down to Richmond with drums 
beating and colors flying, sweeping the South from 
Washington to New Orleans, when, of a sudden, 
Bull Run brought us all up standing. We rubbed 
our eyes, and concluded that some things could 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 417 

not be done as well as others, cleared ourselves by 
laying the blame vigorously on everybody else, 
and have since been more modest and reticent. 
But the evil, abated, is not destroyed. Ofiicers 
swell and strut in sudden importance at Washing- 
ton hotels, and their men lie drunk in the streets. 
A quartermaster sends provisions to troops, and 
of thirty cominissioned officers not one is to be 
found in camp. Congressional busybodies, instead 
of stopping at home on Sunday, and saying their 
prayers, must needs tramp down to see the fight. 
It may or may not have been necessary to fight 
the battle on Sunday, but it certainly was not 
necessary for civilians to leave their churches, and 
stand agape while it was going on. It is pleasant 
to reflect that at least one of them atoned for his 
folly in the prisons of Virginia. 

The petty schemes and petty ambitions which 
are constantly transpiring in our own ranks are far 
more alarming than anything which has yet tran- 
spired in the rebel ranks. It was to be hoped that, 
in such an emergency, all merely personal interests 
would be forgotten in the general good ; that every 
man would put his shoulder to the nearest wheel ; 
that fitness would be the only recommendation to 
place, and propriety the only inducement to meas- 
ures. But political chicanery cannot be given up ; 
so there is bickering about rank, and parleying on 
old party distinctions ; and, while the country is 
on trial for life, men dare talk on the bearing which 

18* AA 



418 COUNTRY LIVING. 

such and such a movement will have on the next 
Presidency ! 

There is another thing on which I look with 
horror, as calculated to bring on us swift destruc- 
tion, and indicating that we deserve it. I mean 
the indulgence of what is called the war spirit. 
The war spirit is utterly hateful. Just so far as it 
acquires dominion over us, it will drag us down to 
death. We may count it all joy that we are reck- 
oned worthy to resist unto blood striving against 
sin. We should count it all joy that God has 
given us spirit and strength to rise up at last 
against the iniquity which has overshadowed us so 
long. We should feel a righteous satisfaction in 
the struggle, so far as it is a strugo-le of right 
against wrong ; but coarse exultation, ghastly jest- 
ing, lust of revenge, pride of conquest, gloating 
over the anticipated punishment of the rebels, — 
this is of the Devil, devilish. I see prints in the 
shop windows which seem to me like the hand- 
writing on the wall. I see little boys dressed in 
Zouave costume, and brandishing tiny swords, and 
I am sick at heart. We are throwincr a meretri- 
cious glare around the war, and concealing its true 
issues. We ought not to veil from ourselves the 
fact that it is solemn, terrible, momentous. We 
cannot comprehend the grandeur of the interests 
involved, but we can gird ourselves to present 
duty, lay aside every weight and the sins which 
so easily beset us, and press forward. Levity is 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 419 

the result of ignorance or bravado. What I want 
is, that we should be awake to the emergency. 
We should put down the war-spirit, and put up 
the Christ-spirit. It is a question, not of the 
strength of the people, but the virtue of the people, 
which is their strength. Are there ten righteous 
men to save the city ? I believe there are, not- 
withstanding unfavorable indications. The scum 
comes first to the surface, but there must be a mass 
of pure liquid below, which will make itself felt. 
The unanimity of the people is astonishing. Their 
spirit of self-sacrifice is noble, and not to be mis- 
taken. Only when we have bestowed our goods, 
and given our bodies to be burned, let us not with- 
hold that other gift without which this will profit 
lis nothing. While doing our utmost, we should 
pray our utmost, for we are in the hands of God, 
and not in the hands of man. We must sanctify 
ourselves, if we would keep the sacred fire burn- 
ing. We should humble ourselves before God, 
repent of and turn from our sins, purify our mo- 
tives, and count all sacrifices nothing, if at last, 
tried seven times in the fire, we may stand before 
Him, accepted in the beloved. 

No one lesson is more clearly taught by passing 
events, than the danger of tampering with iniquity. 
Our fathers knew and felt and acknowledged 
that slavery was wrong. Its glaring inconsistency 
with the principles for which they had fought, and 
on which they proposed to found a great nation, 



420 • COUNTRY LIVING. 

was as obvious to them as it is to the Garrison 
Abolitionists. They would gladly have extermi- 
nated it at once ; but there was strong opposition, 
and, in view of its expected speedy natural death, 
they decided not to throw it summarily over the 
ship's side, but to roll it gently down an inclined 
plane — just as surely into the sea. Instead of 
making it go at once, they stood upon the order of 
its going. They compromised with the sum of all 

w villanies. They admitted it into the Constitution, 
not by name, but by a well-understood euphuism. 
They meant no harm. They meant only good. 
They conceived themselves to be acting wisely and 
rightly. Nothing was further from their thoughts 
than the subsequent sudden rise and increase of 
slavery. They supposed that, though they had 
not killed it outright, they had but smoothed its 
patliAvay to the tomb. What was the result ? 

« The demoralization of the country for years, the 
rebellion and treason that now stalk abroad un- 
ashamed, the blood shed in Baltimore and in 
many a battle since, the earthquake shock that 
quivers through all the land, — these make answer 
to-day, " Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth 
death." It was a little sin, — only a little yield- 
ing to wrong, for a little while, — but it has 
brought forth death. 

Not that we should reproach our fathers for in- 
corporating into our national existence one baleful 
element ; but that we are to take warning from 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 421 

tliem. They had not our precedent and our les- 
son. They saw only as a mustard-seed this evil 
which we see as a broad-spreading tree. It was 
so small a compromise that doubtless it seemed to 
them scarcely any compromise at all. But we 
have seen how the little worm has gnawed at the 
life of a nation, and carried sorrow and a fearful 
looking for into thousands of families. Their mo- 
tives were doubtless upright, but God's laws in 
action are modified only by each, other. A moth- 
er's tenderest love ruins her child by mismanage- 
ment just as thoroughly as if it were the intensest 
hate. Isabella of Spain, a pure and lovely wo- 
man, a most just and gracious monarch, cherished 
in her inmost heart the welfare of her people ; yet 
she fastened upon their necks the heavy yoke of 
the Inquisition, under which they have groaned, 
being burdened, now these four hundred years. 
God did not hinder her from laying the axe at the 
root of her kingdom, because she verily thought 
she was doing him and it service. It may be said 
that the original concessions were necessary ; that 
the war of the Revolution, with all its sacrifices 
and sufferings, would have been in vain without 
some such compromise ; that the States would 
have refused to become United States, and so the 
nation would have been strangled at its birth, — 
nay, would not have been born at all. 

Here we pass from the known into the un- 
known. We do not know that anything of the 



422 COUNTRY LIVING. 

sort would have happened ; and if it had hap- 
pened, we do not know that it was not the very- 
best thing that could have happened. We might 
have failed to be a great power, but God is able of 
the very stones to raise up powers unto himself. 
" It is necessary for me to go, it is not necessary 
for me to live," was Pompey's reply to the weep- 
ing friends who would have held him back from 
fate. It is necessary to do right ; it is not neces- 
sary to be a nation. What might have happened 
had liberty been brought out from the struggle 
with no blot on her escutcheon, we do not know. 
She came out with one damning spot thereon, and 
what has happened we do know. Sin, finished, 
has brought forth death, and the end is not yet. 
No. Wrong is wrong forevermore. The cor- 
rupt tree brings forth corrupt fruit, however care- 
fiilly planted and constantly watered. Purity of 
motive may avail the actor before God, but not 
the act in his world. Consequences follow relent- 
lessly on the heels of causes. A fact once a fact 
is forever beyond Qur reach. What may come of 
it we do not know, and it is not our province to 
ascertain. We are responsible only for the fact. 
Of course, I speak only of actions that have a 
moral quality. There are many courses of con- 
duct which have, of themselves, no moral quality, 
and their eligibility depends entirely on the prob- 
able consequences ; but when two ways are open, 
one of which is right, and the other a little wrong, 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 423 

we are to choose the right, notwithstanding the 
evils which threaten to follow. The choice is 
ours, the consequences God's. We see the evils 
behind the right ; we do not see the evils behind 
the wrong ; but the inexorable logic of God's laws 
will ultimately reveal them. It may seem to you 
that the wrong is but for a moment, and its effects 
imperceptible ; but some fact of which you never 
dreamed may be travelling towards you with 
swift, unerring feet, and its spear-touch shall 
change your dwarf into a giant. Your little sin 
shall receive an impulse that will drive it on con- 
tinually, perpetuating, enlarging, and multiplying 
itself. The men of the Revolution could not see 
an idea which lay hidden in Whitney's brain, but 
at the appointed hour it came forth, and changed 
the face and fate of slavery. The moment you do 
a wrong thing, no matter though your motives be 
pure, no matter even though you are unconscious 
of the wrong, that moment you have put your- 
self out of the line of God's righteous sequences ; 
you have disturbed relations, destroyed balance, 
broken law, and you know not where you are, nor 
wdiither you are drifting. But do the right thing, 
and, though you may not see the way far before 
you, you may surely know that you are in har- 
mony wath God, you are parallel with the line of 
his laws. You are precisely where you ought to 
be, and who is he that shall harm you, if ye be 
followers of that which is good ? 



424 COUNTRY LIVING. 

But this " ]oo;ic of events " lias two sides. It 
is powerful for good as for evil. An act done 
with bad intentions may result in good, just as 
truly as act done with good intentions may result 
in evil. Let this be our hope to-day. A most 
wicked war is waged by the South for the support 
and extension of slavery. Glory to God in the 
highest, and on earth peace, if it shall result in 
the abolition of slavery. Our fathers did not take 
up arms for independence, but they achieved it 
before they laid them down. We did not enter 
upon this war for the purpose of abolishing slav- 
ery, but every day strengthens the probability that 
tliat will be the issue. It is not the end which the 
government has in view, but it may be the end 
which God has in view. Destiny marches on, 
and if slavery stands in the way, slavery must go 
down. There would, indeed, be a sublime, a 
divine justice, in destroying this overshadowing 
wrong by the very instruments relied on for its 
indefinite increase. It was begun with set pur- 
pose of wickedness, but let not him that girdeth on 
his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off. 
Once begun, the war and its issues passed out of 
the hands of its beginners forever. It will go on 
according to its own irresistible laws. The voice 
that evoked is powerless to lay it. The hideous 
monster may become the terror and the destruc- 
tion of its creators. Nor, if this is indeed in the 
decrees of God, can men at the North, any more 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 425 

than mobs at the South, prevent it. The North- 
ern mind is gradually becoming familiarized with 
the thought, and the more we look at it the more 
desirable it seems. The Republicans spoke truly 
in affirming that they did not design to meddle 
with slavery in the slave States ; but twenty, fifty, 
a hundred years of change have come since then, 
and different premises require different conclu- 
sions. Slavery has meddled with them. Slavery 
has reached out its leprous hand to strike at them, 
and to pollute the fair heritage they would leave 
to their children ; and it is to be decided now how 
best to " crush the wretch." It is a difficult and 
a dangerous problem, but it will be solved. Just 
how the bands of the oppressed are to be loosened 
we do not see ; nor how the victims of oppression, 
freed from its fetters, shall be freed from its hor- 
rors, its vices and ignorance and barbarism ; but 
the same God that has used this nation to enslave 
them, and shall use it to free them, — making 
us, free agents as we are in our small spheres, 
blind tools to work his will in his infinite sphere, 
— can surely make and point out a way to pre- 
serve, protect, and enlighten his down-trodden 
little ones. We must hurry slowly. We need 
not borrow trouble. When the time comes, we 
shall have come too. Our present duty is to 
secure and maintain the integrity of the nation. 
God will strengthen and fit us for any work that 
may result from the prosecution of this work. 



426 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Confident I am, that where one man, a year ago, 
considered the speedy extinction of slavery feasible 
and desirable, one thousand watch, and wait, and 
pray for it now. 

Let the war go on, then. If we are not en- 
gaged in a righteous cause, may the Lord send us 
defeat after defeat, disappointment after disappoint- 
ment, till we weary of fighting against him, and 
return repentant to his ways. I know no such 
ethics as " My country, right or wrong ! " save, as 
has been admirably said, when right, to be kept 
right, — when wrong, to be put right. If we are, 
as I verily believe, armed with the sword of the 
Lord, let us go on, if God please, till every inch 
of our soil is free, — free to slaves, free to free- 
men. Let the Black Hole be cleansed, and thi'own 
open to the day. Let there be no corner of our 
vast domain where man shall not be held sacred, 
where his opinions may not find free utterance, 
and his person entire safety. The South says she 
may be crushed, but she cannot be conquered. 
Very well. Let her be crushed, then. Just as 
she pleases about that. The hurt of the daughter 
of my people is no surface wound, to be gently 
bathed and tenderly bandaged. It is a deep-seated 
sore, sending down its malignant influences to the 
dividing asunder of soul and spirit, making the 
whole head sick and the whole heart faint. If 
nothing will avail but the surgeon's knife, let the 
surgeon's knife cut sharp, quick, and deep. It is 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 427 

better to enter into life maimed, than to die un- 
scathed. Let us be sealed unto God, even though 
we be baptized with the baptism of fire. The 
North is not to be saved from the South. The 
South is to be saved from herself. Her own loyal 
sons are to be saved from the foes of her own 
household. Her children are to be saved from 
the vice that creeps in upon their hearthstones, 
and corrupts their blood, and poisons their man- 
hood, and darkens their womanhood. The whole 
country is to be saved from the traitors that defile 
while they attack it. Every blow struck is struck 
for the South as much as for the North. We 
strike at the rebels and the rebellion of the South, 
and for the South. The only victory we want is 
over her worst enemies. North and South will 
alike, though not equally, suffer. We look for no 
easy conquest. We are prepared to meet the en- 
ergy of despair. We anticipate a mortal combat, 
but the South must be redeemed. She must be 
brought out from the Valley of the Shadow of 
Death. Most gladly would we give every son 
of hers the right hand of fellowship, and bid him 
good luck in the name of the Lord ; but if the 
Avrong can be wiped out only by wiping out the 
men who cherish it, and the men who defend it, 
God's will be done. The land shall rest and 
enjoy her Sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate, 
it shall rest. It is better that a state should be 
a desolation than an abomination. Men and wo- 



428 COUNTRY LIVING. 

men and children, tlie innocent and the guilty, 
must suffer alike ; but it hath been so aforetime. 
It is the immutable law of God, that the penalty 
of guilt shall not be monopolized by its perpetra- 
tors ; but the South grinds in the prison-house, 
and the redemption of her soul is precious. Not 
revenge, nor hatred, nor pride, but the tenderest 
love and the largest benevolence demand the sac- 
rifice. The dumb mouths of her fettered children, 
black and white, the generations that wait in the 
grand and awful future, the here and the here- 
after, all demand this at our hands. The justice 
and truth in our own hearts demand it with so im- 
perative a voice, that it were 

" better to have fought and lost, 
Than never to have fought at all." 

Let us make the case our own. Is there a man, 
woman, or child in Massachusetts, who would not 
rather our beloved State (God bless her !) should 
sink into the ocean depths forever, with her freight 
of a million souls, than that it should be given 
up to slavery ? And should we spare any sacri- 
fice to save others from a doom which is so fearful 
to ourselves ? 

Let us come up to the height of this great, argu- 
ment. Let us be strong, and quit ourselves hke 
men. 

I have seen and heard deprecations of slavery 
discussions at the preserwt crisis. " This war," it 
is said, "is not a w^ar for the abolition of slav- 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 429 

ery, but for the existence of the government." 
" Antislavery harangues will only alienate some 
who are now the stanch allies of the govern- 
ment." " Many will become disaffected, if the 
war is made to turn slavery-ward." " One thing 
at a time." In all of which there is some truth ; 
but, ever since I can remember, balancing of 
powers, parties, and principles has been in vogue, 
and this is what we have come to. Here, an 
able leader, a world-renowned statesman, can- 
not be our candidate for the Presidency, because 
his election will drive the South into secession. 
There, a measure must be dropped, because it will 
alienate certain localities. Such and such a terri- 
tory must be acquired, at the price of blood, to 
conciliate such an interest. Such and such a ques- 
tion must not be debated, because it will inflame 
passions. So Ave have tacked and shifted and 
beaten, and here we are plump in the middle of 
the very whirlpool which our prudence was to 
avoid. With all our reticence, we are precisely 
in the position which we were reticent in order to 
keep out of. Now let us try another plan awhile. 
Let us say what we think, and be straightforward, 
and not so far-sighted for consequences, and see 
where that will land us. If there ai*e any persons 
attached to this government by such a spider's 
web that they will fall off if slavery is brought in, 
let them fall. Doubtless the government can stand 
it, if they can. A patriotism that, at this late day, 



430 COUNTRY LIVING. 

will suffer itself to be cut loose from its country by 
slavery discussions, is not a thing to be depended 
on. Patriotism, to be good for much, must be made 
of sterner stuff. 

Moreover, what is true in the remarks I have 
quoted applies solely to the government. Nobody 
wants Mr. Lincoln to issue a proclamation an- 
nouncing the object of the war to be the abolition 
of slavery. It would not be true. The war is, 
indeed, a war of self-defence, not of slavery extinc- 
tion ; but this self-defence may come to demand 
the extinction of slavery as a " military necessity." 
Until then, government has no right to act in the 
matter. " One thing at a time," cex^tainly. The 
one thing on hand now is the war, which is to be 
carried vigorously on to a successful termination. 
But it is to be carried on by the government ; and 
the readers and writers of books and of newspa- 
pers generally, the speakers and hearers in popular 
assemblies, the hosts and o-uests in drawino--rooms, 
the knots at the exchanges and the village post- 
offices, are not the government. Down below the 
government lies the people ; and while the govern- 
ment, at the bidding of the people, its creator and 
master, is crushing rebellion, and uprooting trea- 
son, and protecting loyalty, and vindicating its own 
life, " we, the people," may legally and reasonably 
take counsel together that the republic nevermore 
receive harm from the hand that strikes at it now. 
This is alike our duty and our right. Having pro- 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 431 

vided the sinews of war, we have nothing further 
to do with it but watch and wait and pray. It is 
not in our power or our province to direct its 
processes. Our interference woukl be intermed- 
dling. We order its existence, but we delegate its 
details to other hands. Yet we hold the power. 
We are responsible to God, and we shall be held 
to strict account by posterity, for the direction 
which that power takes. When this people wills 
to put away the accursed thing, the accursed thing 
will go. While the armies are fighting, we should 
plan. When they come back to us garlanded with 
laurel, we should go out to meet them, not only 
with o-rateful welcome, but with the death-warrant 
in our hands of the wretch whose wrath they have 
bearded, whose cunning they have foiled, and 
whose power they have broken. 

•Has not the accursed thing filled up the meas- 
ure of its iniquities ? Read the roll of crimes. It 
is written in blood. What woe it has wrought to 
that unhappy race which has writhed under its 
grinding heel, we only a little know. Into the 
secrets of that prison-house we cannot penetrate. 
Over that bridge of sighs we may not pass. Ever 
and anon a miasmatic blast sweeps past our star- 
tled ears. A sob, a wail, a shriek, a moan, floats 
up the heavy air. A lurid light flames out, a 
sickly sunshine, pale, and blue, and ghastly, flick- 
ers for a moment on the sluggish bog, but the 
silence aod darkness come back. Only the All- 



432 COUNTRY LIVING. 

seeing Eye discerns. God forgive us that we have 
been too insensate of our lowly brother's woe, too 
unmindful of his weal. God overrule his long; 
sorrow to his longer joy, as we believe He has 
already begun to do, and turn away from us the 
fierceness of His anger. 

But what the grim Grendel has wrought for our 
own race we better know. All these years he 
had been working evil under the sun. Bench, 
and bar, and hall, and pulpit, and counting-room, 
and field, and fireside, have been tainted with his 
presence. He has tampered with public and pri- 
vate honesty. He has debased, degraded, and 
brutalized American freemen, marring their birth- 
right. He has turned their beautiful garden into 
a wilderness. The ignorance that disgraces, the 
vice that demoralizes, the barrenness that lays 
waste the South, are all his work. He has made 
our nation a stumbling-block, a hissing, and a by- 
word to the nations. He has introduced discord 
and brawling, insolence, rapacity, and murder, 
into our national councils. The bitter hatred that 
fires the South against the North is all his doing. 
The financial derangement that weighs so heavily 
and perplexes so fearfully, that plows furrows in 
young brows, and baffles the wisdom of old expe- 
rience, and scatters the fruits of life-long toil, and 
imbitters homes with anxieties for the loved, — all 
are of him. But the destruction of property, the 
stagnation of business, the pressure of want, are 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 433 

the least evils of Slavery. He has despoiled us 
of our honor. He has poisoned our fountains. 
He has polluted our holy things. The wide- 
spread treachery that has desolated us like a 
plague, and made us feel as if the solid ground 
were failing beneath our feet, had its root and rise 
in him. The broken oaths, the piled-up perjuries 
that have at once exasperated and saddened us, lie 
at his door. What shall a man give in exchange 
for his soul ? What woe can fall upon a nation 
like the disgrace of her children ? What is the 
price of a mother's blush for her son's shame ? 

Slavery has done more. His hands are red 
and reeking. O my country ! The voice of your 
children's blood crieth unto you from the Ever- 
glades of Florida and the lowlands of Texas. It 
was Slavery that led them and left them there to 
die. It is Slavery that arms brother against 
brother to-day. Young wives are widows, young 
children are fatherless, old men go mourning to 
the grave, matron and maiden are desolate, be- 
cause Slavery has laid the delight of their eyes in 
the dust. From once fair Maryland and royal 
Virmnia — old and blighted and effete before 
their time under the simoom of Slavery — pale, 
still forms are borne back to us, that went out 
overflowing with sweet life. The youngest, the 
bravest, and the best have fallen. Love and lib- 
erty and law, whatever is most beautiful, most 
cherished, most sacred, this Slavery demands. 

19 BB 



434 COUNTRY LIVING. 

The tears of mothers, the silent anguish of' white- 
haired fathers, the fears and foreboding and 
heart-ache that sit by uncounted firesides, mark 
where his footsteps have been. 

Now let us make an end ; for why should we be 
destroyed, we and our children ? When we scotch 
the snake, why not kill him, and have done with 
it ? We may disable him for a time ; but so long 
as there is life left in him, there is an accursed 
thing in the midst of thee. O Israel, thou canst 
not stand before thine enemies until ye take away 
the accursed thing from among you. We may 
crush the rebellion, and reinstate peace, but if we 
leave slavery where it was, if we simply restore the 
statu quo., it will be sowing to the wind, and our 
children will have to reap another whirlwind, only 
more violent than that which is sweeping over us. 
Just as long as slavery is a part of our institutions, 
just so long is there a rotten pillar in our temple, 
which may at any moment give way, and bring us 
to confusion and destruction. To restore peace, 
leaving slavery as it was, is to put a ship on her 
course when she has been lightened by the spas- 
modic efforts of " all hands at the pumps," with- 
out stopping the hole through which the water 
rushed in. It is to weed a garden by cutting off 
the witch-prevent grass with a hoe. It is to allay 
boiling and steam by pouring on cold water. We 
want not only the hold emptied, but the leak 
stopped. We want not only treason cut off, but 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 435 

its roots dug up. We want not only the steam 
checked, but the fire put out, so that there may be 
no more steam made. We do not want every 
generation or every century to be convulsed as we 
have been. Let us make a full end. If we stop 
short of that, all our work will have to be done 
over again at some time. There is an irrepressible 
conflict between freedom and slavery. There will 
be an irrepressible agitation so long as they both 
live. We never can have peace with this element 
of discord. We cannot serve God and mammon. 
One or the other must be dethroned. We are not 
left in doubt as to which it shall be. Eighty years 
of trial have revealed the true aspect and tenden- 
cies of Slavery. Arraigned at the bar of civiliza- 
tion and Christianity, the verdict is, " Guilty ! " 
In her has been found the blood of prophets and 
of saints. She is become the habitation of devils, 
and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of 
every unclean and hateful bird. All nations have 
drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication ; 
and I hear a voice from heaven saying, Come out 
of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her 
sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues ; for 
her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath 
remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as 
she rewarded you, and double unto her double 
according to her works : in the cup which she hath 
filled, fill to her double. 

I know that even slavery has its sunny side. 



436 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Kindness, benevolence, affection, devotion, self- 
sacrifice, are not wanting there. Instruments of 
love as well as instruments of cruelty are in that 
habitation. Man is better as Avell as worse than 
his system. But a luxurious vegetation springs up 
from the deadly Pontine Marshes. It was a goodly 
Babylonish garment, a splendidly massive golden 
wedge, shekels of fine silver, that wrought folly 
in Israel. But for all their gold and goodliness, 
they Avere none the less an accursed thing. More- 
over, the virtues that exist in slavery do not spring 
from it, but in spite of it. Slavery does not cher- 
ish them. It only cannot kill them. The destruc- 
tion of slavery would not be the destruction, but 
the cultivation, of every good thing that is found 
in it. Its abolition will be the abolition of what is 
hideous, an abomination to God and man. Every 
pleasant I'elation, every opportunity for the exer- 
cise of every virtue, will remain. Every grace 
that makes slavery less repulsive will make free- 
dom more beautiful. Every gem that adorns the 
brow of slavery shall be transferred, to shine with 
renewed and increasing lustre in the diadem of 
freedom. Nothing will be permanently lost, but 
that whose loss is infinite gain. 

I know that slavery cannot be destroyed with- 
out inconvenience, and perhaps positive suffering, 
on the part of many who are guiltless of its sin ; 
but it cannot be retained without immeasurably 
greater. It is not a question between an evil and 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 437 

a good, but between an evil and an evil. It was a 
great deal of trouble to stop in the enemy's coun- 
trj, take Israel by tribes, the tribes by families, 
the families by households, the household man by 
man, till Achan was taken. It was a sad thing to 
bring Achan, and his sons, and his daughters, and 
his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent, 
and all that he had, into the valley of Achor, and 
stone him with stones, and burn him with fire ; 
but it was a greater trouble, and a sadder thing, to 
see Israel fleeing before their enemies, and the 
hearts of the people becoming as water, and the 
face of the Lord turned upon them in anger. It 
is hard to lose a right eye ; but if thy right eye 
offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee. 
It is not only no loss, it is profitable for thee that 
one of thy members should perish, and not that 
thy whole body should be cast into hell. In the 
extirpation of the accursed thing, loyal hearts 
may be alienated, undeserved indignation may be 
aroused, unoffending persons may suffer, but in 
the face of great events " the individual withers, 
and the world is more and more." The evil will 
be temporary, the good everlasting. So far as we 
can, we will help our brothers bear the burden, 
but the burden must be imposed. For their sakes 
and for our own, for the nation's sake and for pos- 
terity's sake, we must take this weight on our 
shoulders. The scenes of the last few years, cvil- 
minating in the horrors of the last few months. 



438 COUNTRY LIVING. 

must never be repeated. It would be unspeakable 
cowardice, and weakness, and selfishness, for us, 
with our experience of its effects, to hand this 
accursed thing down to trouble future Israels. 
No opposition from any quarter must be allowed 
to overbear our will to be free. All manner of 
opposition from those whose affections or whose 
selfishness is interested must be expected, and 
met, and put aside. Slavery has glorified herself, 
and lived deliciously ; and it is natural that the 
kings of the earth who have committed fornication 
and lived deliciously with her shall bewail her, 
and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke 
of her burning. And the merchants of the earth 
shall weep and mourn over her ; for no man 
buyeth their merchandise any moi'e. When the 
fruits that her soul lusted after are departed from 
her, and all things which were dainty and goodly 
are departed from her, and she shall find them no 
more at all, it is not strange if the merchants of 
these things which were made rich by her shall 
stand afar off, for the fear of her torment, weeping 
and wailing, saying, Alas, alas ! for in one hour 
so great riches has come to naught. And every 
shipmaster, and as many as trade by sea, shall 
stand afar off, and cast dust on their heads, and 
cry, weeping and wailing, Alas, alas ! for in one 
hour is she made desolate. But rejoice over her, 
thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets ; 
for God hath avenged you on her. 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 439 

The constitvitionality of slavery has been the 
stumbling-block to conscientious and practical 
minds. Recognizing fully its undesirableness both 
in a moral and economical point of view, they 
have felt that they had neither tlie right nor 
the power to lay their hands upon it. The only 
weapon they could bring to bear against it was 
influence. This discrepancy between conscience 
and the Constitution has been fruitful of conflicts 
between well-disposed citizens. One extreme has 
gone so far as to set aside the Constitution because 
it recognized slavery. They called it a covenant 
with death and an agreement with hell. The 
other extreme accepted slavery against their own 
moral sense, because it was found in the Constitu- 
tion, and they considered themselves bound by that 
for better, for worse. Accepting its benefits, they 
felt constrained to accept its drawbacks. I must 
confess that the Constitution never troubled me in 
the least. It is to be interpreted either by the let- 
ter or by the spirit. If by the letter, there is no 
recognition of slavery. The word "slave" or 
" slavery " does not once occur. It talks of " per- 
sons held to service," &c. It says such persons 
" shall be delivered up on claim of the party to 
whom such service or labor may be due." Cer- 
tainly. By all means. Common honesty requires 
it. If a teacher is engaged to teach a year in 
Mississippi, and falls homesick, and is so weak as 
to run home instead of staying there and braving 



440 COUNTRY LIVING. 

it out, stern justice should shut its eyes to his 
weakness and force him to return and finish his 
school. If a Northern blacksmith refuses to put 
on Southern horses the shoes which Southern 
money has paid for, and rushes to his mother 
State for help, let her not shield the culprit, biit 
set him vi et armis before his forge and anvil. If 
a clergyman stealthily and feloniously leave his 
parish before his time is out, bearing with him 
both salary and sermons, O carry him back to 
old Virginia, and make him px^each his barrelful. 
Law and equity alike demand it, and all well-edu- 
cated people will say. Amen ! But what service 
is due between two parties whose only contract is 
force on the one side and fear on the other ? 
Who can show the papers wherein God made 
over his ownership of his children to any man or 
men ? If any slave-hunter can shov/ to the slave- 
harborer a quitclaim deed from God of Sambo 
or Andy, let Sambo and Andy be given up, but 
not till then. When service can be proved to be 
due, let service be exacted, but let not past ser- 
vice exacted be the proof of future service due. 
That would be to make wickedness self-genera- 
tive. That would make the fact of plunder the 
justification of plunder. That would turn Christ's 
" If any man take away thy coat, let him have 
thy cloak also," into " If thou canst take away 
any man's coat, it establishes thy claim to his cloak 
also," and would make a true thief's motto of 
" Whatever is is ri^ht." 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 441 

If it is the spirit of the Constitution tliat is to 
be observed, we are all in delightful harmony 
again. The spirit of the Constitution contem- 
plates the speedy removal of slavery, not its in- 
crease or perpetuity. The framers of the Consti- 
tution did not design to cherish it into vigor and 
power, but to break its fall. The safeguards they 
threw around it were not to save it, but to make 
it die easy ! Those who are its firmest support- 
ers admit this. The so-called Vice-President of 
the Southern Confederacy admits that the fathers 
were antislavery. They could not conceive that 
a nation which had just struck the fetters from its 
own limbs should rivet them on the limbs of an- 
other nation. They could not conceive that lib- 
erty should be worsted in a nation which had just 
come off conqueror in its name. Their fear was 
lest liberty should degenerate into license. They 
saw that there might be danger lest, in their enthu- 
siasm for universal liberty, they might trample on 
rights. So far as I remember, there are but three 
allusions to slavery in the Constitution. None of 
these ordain slavery. All three are rather pro- 
tective. No unprejudiced reader can, I think, 
deny that they are designed as breakwaters against 
the rapidly and powerfully advancing tide of anti- 
slavery. The framers of the Constitution evi- 
dently believed they saw the signs of slavery's 
speedy overthrow. They seem, indeed, to have 
feared lest it should be overthrown before the 

19* 



442 COUNTRY LIVING. 

country could be disentangled from it, and so both 
fall together. Slavery must fall, but they would 
let it down softly, and give everybody time to 
stand from under. The Constitution was so 
framed that emancipation would make not even a 
verbal change necessary. The spirit of the Con- 
stitution is essentially antislavery. 

So then we are at one both as to the letter and 
the spirit, though we get there in a roundabout 
way, — somewhat as light travels in that instru- 
ment by which itinerant showmen enable the 
astonished to read through a brick. By an ar- 
rangement of mirrors, the rays of light are so 
reflected that the image to be seen, instead of go- 
ing straight to the eye, turns four angles, but 
comes right side up at last. (Opticians will par- 
don a confusion of popular and scientific language 
in this illustration. Most of my readers are not 
opticians, and will not know that everything is not 
just as it should be.) 

If this should seem a Jesuitical and tortuous 
mode of reasoning, I will simply say, that, although 
I do not think so, I w^ill not press the argument, 
because I do not need it. For slavery neither 
by name nor nature is ordained in the Constitu- 
tion. It is recognized as a fact, but it is not estab- 
lished as a law. Now the recognition of a fact 
does not establish a law. It was a fact that thei"e 
were persons in the country at the time who were 
not free, and, though the fact could be glossed 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 443 

over, It could not be entirely ignored ; but its 
acknowledgment neither jvistifies nor perpetuates 
it. To say that a man is not free, is a very differ- 
ent thing from saying that he shall not be free. 

" Slaves for want of legislation are not quite 
like slaves by law." So long as slavery hid its 
noisome head in the Dismal Swamps of the South, 
I will admit that there may have been " reason 
on both sides," but the secessionists have changed 
all that. Slavery, under their lead, has abandoned 
its stirring, silent, watchful passivity, and struck 
openly. Even as a transient thing, the fathers 
opposed slavery, but with an opposition which its 
expected sj^eedy death made feeble. Supposing 
that it would be confined to the very limited local- 
ity where it then existed, and that it would shortly 
perish before a rapidly advancing energy, educa- 
tion, and Christianity, they contented themselves 
with rocking the cradle of its declining years and 
preparing for it decent burial. But even granting 
that they legislated with its perpetuity in view, 
they legislated only for an institution, not for a 
mortal foe. Since their time, slavery has reared 
its huge form in open hostility. It has striven to 
strike down the pillars of state, unconscious that 
its own ruin would be involved therein. It has 
attempted the life of the nation. It has assaulted 
with intent to kill. It is guilty of murder in the 
first degree. Whatever constitutional riolit it had 
to live, its wicked course has forfeited. It has no 



444 COUNTRY LIVING. 

more lien upon life than the murderer. Just as 
well might he lift his blood-stained hands, and 
plead against his gallows sentence the acknowl- 
edged right of all men to life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness, as slavery point to the Con- 
stitution for protection. A woman promises to 
obey her husband, but if he goes mad and bids 
her fling herself from the garret window, does her 
marriage vow bind her to do it ? A man takes a 
pet kitten to please a departing friend, and prom- 
ises to cherish it all his life as a memento. But 
the kitten turns out to be a tiger, and puts the 
man's life and the lives of his children in jeop- 
ardy ; does his promise bind him ? The slavery 
which our fathers saw was a playful, if rather 
snappish kitten, compared to the ferocious tiger 
into which the accursed thino; has grown. Now 
lifting its fiery eyes from rending our children's 
flesh, and licking its bloody chaps, and growling 
its beastly wrath, shall it find safety in the Consti- 
tution ? Heaven forbid ! Rather take the beast, 
and with him the false prophets who deceived 
them that had the mark of the beast, and them 
that worshipped his image, and cast them into a 
bottomless pit of reprobation, abhorrence, and in- 
famy, in whose lowest deep a lower deep still 
threatening to devour them opens wide. 

I am sick at heart when I hear the word com- 
promise. The rumors which have sometimes dark- 
ened the air seem to have had no foundation ; yet, 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 445 

because liabit becomes a second nature, I cannot 
hear them without a thrill of dread. I could 
almost wish the word even blotted from our lan- 
guage. Doubtless there is such a thing as a just 
and righteous compromise, — a relinquishment of 
individual benefits for the general good, — a yield- 
ing of desires for tlie sake of peace, — a saci'ifice 
of prejudices, tastes, sentiments, interests, in defer- 
ence to the weakness of others. But the compro- 
mises with which Americans are most familiar are 
such as to whelm the word in odium. We have 
not so much compromised as submitted. We have 
deferred to threats till we have earned the reputa- 
tion of cowards. We have incurred the contempt, 
even, of those for whose sake we have given up 
our principles. We have sacrificed everything to 
peace, and — Heaven be praised ! — we have not 
got it. Besides being cowards, we have been fools. 
We have been deaf to the voice of history, which 
has always thundered in our ears that no nation 
ever purchased a satisfactory peace. Rome bought 
off her foes with gold. We have bought oflF ours 
with honor, and the result is one. Every evil 
spirit so exorcised has returned, bringing with him 
seven other spirits more wicked than himself. But 
the lesson went unlearned. One after another of 
our great men has passed through the fire to Mo- 
loch, and the cry is still. They come. Compromise 
is the rock on which our lives, our fortunes, and. 
our sacred honor have been stranded, and men 



446 COUNTRY LIVING. 

dare to speak of it still. We have seen both its 
wickedness and its folly. It has outraged our 
moral sense, and has not accomplished anything ; 
yet there are men who cling to it. Firmness in 
the outset might have prevented the evil, and cer- 
tainly could not have made it any worse than it is 
now. If, when slavery thi-eatened disunion, we 
had bvit stood our ground, this quarrel might never 
have arisen, or, if it arose, it might have been 
speedily allayed. Every time we have staved it 
off by compromises, we have been giving it ampler 

" room and verge enough, 
The characters of hell to trace." 

With every respite, the accursed thing has taken 
breath, enlarged its lair, sharpened its claws, and 
waxed fat. With every day, the arena of the con- 
test has been widened, its results multiplied, and 
its intensity and bitterness increased. It may in- 
deed be, that, in the end, this postponement may 
be seen to have resulted in good. It may be that 
God will overrule the severity of the struggle to 
the welfare of the combatants. It may be that, 
if the question had been sooner and more easily 
settled, treason would not have been so utterly 
abolished as we trust it now will be. It may have 
been allowed to attain its present enormity, that 
men may awake fully to its character and conse- 
quences, and trample it under foot forever. But, 
although it is well enouo-h for us to console our- 
selves with this reflection, the thing being done, it 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 447 

is no justification to the authors, and no guide for 
the future. It is always right to make the best of 
a bad position, but it is never right to put ourselves 
in a bad position because we can make the best of 
it. Judas betrayed our Saviour to the cross, and 
the world was redeemed, but no thanks to Judas. 
However much God may overrule our sins to carry 
on his own wise purposes, we are not justified in 
continuing in our sins. Our business is to make 
straight in the desert a highway for our God, — to 
let our eyes look right on, and our eyelids straight 
before us. If God can use evil for good, how much 
more can he use good for good ! 

As for compromise, it is not to be so much as 
named among us. Compromise ! Compromise 
with traitors ! Compromise with men who have 
incurred the unutterable guilt of lifting their hand 
against their own mother ! What fellowship hath 
rio'hteousness with unrio-hteousness ? What com- 
munion hath lijiht with darkness ? What concord 
hath Christ with Belial ? 

It is said that these vague reports are sent out as 
" feelers." Let them be feelers ! Let them feel 
the indignation and abhorrence and utter loathino; 
of an outraged people, from whom virtue is not yet 
clean gone forever ; and, when they have felt this 
long enough and strong enough, let them draw 
back into their dens and make report. 

There is probably less danger of a compromise 
now than there will be after the war shall have 



448 COUNTRY LIVING. 

been finished. The indignity offered to onr flag 
roused the patriotism and chivahy of the people, 
and they are not likely to sheathe the sword till 
the insult is avenged. The measure of their long- 
sutferino; is the measure of their indignation. I 
think they are more awake to the importance of 
crushing this rebellion than they are to the impor- 
tance of eradicating its cause. I fear that, when 
the war is over, a mistaken magnanimity towards 
the vanquished, an eagerness to show to the South 
that we are not their enemies, the lack of a full 
and clear comprehension of the magnitude of the 
issues iiivolved and the bearing thereon of the con- 
tinuance of slavery, will induce them to deal with 
it leniently, and give it a new lease of life. I fear 
that slavery now, as after the Revolutionary war, 
dreading immediate destruction, will clamor or sue 
for new or renewed guaranties, and that the peo- 
ple, Avitli a false generosity, will grant them, and 
so let the occasion for righting themselves pass by. 
Slavery will lie bleeding and helpless at their feet, 
and pity for a fallen foe will make them overlook 
the enormity of his crimes and the malignity of his 
nature. But slavery, in little or in great, loyal or 
rebellious, tyrant or suppliant, is always and every- 
where accursed, and we cannot stand till we take 
away the accursed thing from among us. Cruel 
in power, subtle in weakness, its malign purpose is 
ever the same. Whether by a direct or a winding 
way, it goes to one mark. It preys and feeds and 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 449 

Moats on the souls of men. Enslaved and enslaver 
are alike its victims. It is of the Devil, and the 
lusts of its father it will do. Armed to the teeth 
to rob us of our birthright, and speaking great, 
swelling words of vanity, it is no more dangerous 
than fawning at our feet and begging for guaran- 
ties. Guaranty ! Yes, give it one more. Guar- 
antee to it a swift death and a shameful burial. It 
certainly seems to me that if, after our experience, 
we let things go on just as they did before, .we 
shall richly deserve to be oppressed and despoiled 
evermore. It is not enough to restrict slavery. All 
our restrictions will scarcely bring it into smaller 
compass than it occupied eighty years ago. But 
from that acorn sprang to-day. Experience has 
proved that simple restrictions are not enough. 
We must not only bind it with cords, but the cords 
must be continually tightened to the death. We 
should not only adopt measures that look to its 
extinction, but measures that are to bring about 
its extinction. Never, never again, must our be- 
loved land receive such a stab as that from which 
she is now bleeding. In what manner her redemp- 
tion is to be accomplished — whether by a skilful 
untwisting or a sharp and sudden cleaving of the 
Gordian knot — we are neither able nor called 
upon yet to decide ; but let it be done. It is no 
hostility to the South that shall rid her fair borders 
of the accursed thing, nor any true friendship for 
the South that shall retain it there. Fire, and 

cc 



450 COUNTRY LIVING. 

earthquake, and a gi'eat and strong wind, may 
accompany and retard its removal, but they are 
of the Devil, and will pass away. And after 
them shall come the still, small voice of the 
Lord, to approve and soothe and bless, and then 
shall we have that peace whose basis is right- 
eousness, and whose effect is quietness and assur- 
ance forever. 

So far I had written weeks ago. Now, as I 
take up my pen once more on this sad summer 
evening, there falls upon my ear the inarticu- 
late roar from a fearful battle-field, — the melan- 
choly moan of wounded men ; and the shadow 
of a million hearts rests heavily on mine. Be 
pitiful, O God! 

But the clangor of battle, the deathful embrace 
of brothers, the wail of passion and pain and an- 
guish, are the works and words of the accursed 
thing. O thou accursed thing ! The Lord send 
upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke in all 
that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until 
thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly. 
The Lord make the pestilence cleave unto thee, 
until he hath consumed thee from off the land. 
The Lord smite thee with a consumption, and 
with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with 
an extreme burning, and with the sword, and 
with blasting, and with mildew, that they pursue 
thee till thou perish. The Lord cause thee to 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 451 

be smitten before thine enemies, that thou go 
out one way against them, and flee seven ways 
before them. The Lord smite thee with mad- 
ness, and bhndness, and astonishment of heart, 
that thou grope at noonday, and be only op- 
pressed, and spoiled evermore, and no man shall 
save thee. 

O my people ! I call heaven and earth to record 
this day against you, that God hath set before you 
life and death, blessing and cursing ; therefore 
choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live. 
That thou may est love the Lord thy God, and that 
thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest 
cleave unto him, (for he is thy life and the length 
of thy days,) that thou mayest dwell in the land 
which the Lord sware unto thy fathers to give 
them. 

Alas ! sadder than any moan from battle-field, 
sadder than any mother's lament, comes to me the 
voice of a people that will not be wise, — the voice 
and vote of a people that thrusts out the Negro 
from its borders, ignores his rights, his claims, his 
weakness, and says to the Most High God, " Am 
I my brother's keeper ? " 

What we have most to fear in this war is not 
iron rams nor infernal machines, but the stupidity 
and wickedness of our own selves. It is this which 
prolongs, and must prolong, the war more than 
anything which the rebels can bring into the field, 
or sail or sink in the water. Such a paragraph as 



452 COUNTRY LIVING. 

the following, from the New York Times, is full 
of shot and shell : — 

" A prominent gentleman, and a Republican 
office-holder, who has just returned from Cincin- 
nati and. other Western points, reports a general 
development of an intense anti-Abolition senti- 
ment in all quarters of the West, since the Wen- 
dell Phillips riot in Cincinnati. This feeling, he 
reports, is based on the popular repugnance to 
' Negro equality,' toward which the Abolitionists 
are supposed to be tending, — no white man being 
so poor in his own esteem as not to feel him- 
self ' better than a Nigger.' " 

We have no right to expect peace, we should 
have no desire for peace, so long as such a frame 
of mind remains. If a year of war has done no 
more for us than this, if a year of war leaves us 
still in such bonds of iniquity, a thirty-years' war 
will hardly more than free us, and I pray that the 
war may never cease till we are free. I should 
esteem as the greatest curse wuth which this nation 
could be accursed, the coming of a peace when 
there is no peace. We welcomed this war wath 
a solemn joy, because we believed its crimson 
hand would scatter 'broadcast over our country 
the seeds of a new^ life. We believed that the 
day of the Lord was nigh, when he wovild either 
wrench up the evil or wrench up the nation. 
We cannot think the last. We cannot yet read 
a handwriting on the wall, " God hath numbered 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 453 

thy kingdom, and finished it " ; nor can we be- 
lieve that he has shaken this nation from centre 
to circumference only to let ns settle on our lees 
once moi'e, with our taste remaining in us, and 
our scent not changed. Surely there is a future 
for us only waiting our eye and touch. And if 
in the nation the paltry and pitiful idea couched 
in the closing paragraph which I have quoted 
still obtains, we shall have no peace yet, though 
Donelson has slain his thousands, and Pittsburg 
his ten thousands. That miserable paganism 
must be scourged out of us. We must be 
driven by ten, and ten times ten plagues, if need 
be, to recognize that God hath made of one 
blood all the nations of the earth. The hire of 
our laborers, which has been kept back by fraud, 
crieth, and that cry has entered into the ears of 
the Lord of Sabaoth. In his hand there is a 
cup, and the wine is red ; and we, in such case, 
the most wicked upon the face of the earth, shall 
wring out and drink the dregs thereof, if we 
shut our ears to that exceeding bitter cry. In 
the thunders of the cannonade that roll from 
shore to shore, I hear the voice of the Lord : 
" Understand, ye brutish among the people, and 
ye fools, when will ye be wise ? " Every stal- 
wart form that sinks down upon the battle-field, 
or wastes away in the hospital, is a messenger 
from God, saying unto us, " Turn ye, turn ye, 
for why will ye die ? " Let the land be sown 



454 COUNTRY LIVING. 

thicker yet with graves. Let the bolts of Di- 
vine wrath descend swift and ceaseless, till 
through all the land there shall not be a house 
in which there is not one dead, rather than the 
hurt of the daughter of my people should be 
slightly healed. If the sword should be sheathed 
before slavery receives its death-blow, — before 
its vile image falls face downward on the thresh- 
old, — before our respect and deference and ten- 
derness for it are obliterated, and its name and 
memory uprooted, cast out, and trodden iinder 
foot of men, — I should believe that God had 
reserved us to a day of fiercer Avrath and more 
signal destruction. I should believe that he 
had given us this last golden opportunity to rid 
ourselves of an incubus, a shame, a crime, and 
that we, failing to embrace it, had incurred the 
terrible doom, " He is joined to his idols, let him 
alone." 

So it seems to me that we are not yet ready 
for peace, even if peace were ready for us. We 
shall not be ready for it so long as we go 
a-whoring after caste, and color, and other false 
gods. The war has not yet done for us what 
we hoped, and prayed, and worked for such a 
war to do. It has broken up our idols, but it 
has not extirpated idolatry from our hearts. If 
it should cease to-day, I greatly fear that we 
should go wallowing in the mire again to-morrow. 
We are not yet, as a people, brought straight 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 455 

up to an out-and-out abhorrence of slavery for 
its own sake. We have not yet been set long 
enough face to face with its barbarism. We 
have not yet been lashed close enough cheek to 
cheek with its body of death. Its slime and 
stench have not gone deep enough into the secret 
place where our souls abide, and turned them 
sick with loathing. We execrate the derange- 
ment and devastation which it has wrought in our 
own homes, but we are not half awake to the 
horrible crimes which it has committed against 
the wretched race that has so long ground in its 
prison-house of despair. It lifts its head from 
bending over their prostrate forms, lifts its hand 
di'ipping with our brother's blood, and turns its 
glowering gaze on us, and leaves its baleful fin- 
ger-prints on our door-posts, and we spring up 
shuddering, to thrust it back ; but a simple folk, 
whose only power to resist was patience to en- 
dure, a mirthful people, made pathetic and apa- 
thetic through woe, an affectionate people, borne 
down, and held down, even, by their affections, 
hold out chained hands, dumb hands, beseech- 
ingly to us. Not only because we will not be 
slaves, but because they shall be free, should our 
swords leap from the scabbard, and our cannon 
belch forth death. Down into the valley of the 
shadow where they have walked so long, that 
sword-shine has gleamed, that cannon-roar has 
echoed, and carried light and hope for their 



456 COUNTRY LIVING. 

darkness and dole. It belongs to us to keep 
keen blades and strong arms till hope has be- 
come fruition. It is not enough that we fight 
to preserve our government. We must fight to 
purify it. We should fight not only for our 
own lives, but for the lives of these little ones. 
We must not only break the heathen, but up- 
hold the Christ. God will certainly not forget 
these poor who have cried day and night unto 
him. I tell you that he will avenge them 
speedily, and if he does not avenge them by 
us, he will avenge them on us. If we do not 
fight for God, we shall fight against him, and if 
haply we be found to fight against God, we shall 
surely be on the losing side. 

We do ill when we merge the moral aspects of 
this war in its political aspects. We must act po- 
litically, but we should think morally. And only 
when our politics are moral can they be truly pol- 
itic. Good morals may not always be good poli- 
tics, but bad morals can never be. We cannot 
free slaves because we think they ought to be free, 
but we can think they ought to be free. We can 
bring our opinions up abreast of our powers, and 
shoot our desires and designs world-wide beyond 
them. We can press, with our public spirit, and 
our public opinion, and our private deeds, close up 
behind the slowly advancing ranks of our soldiers 
and our law-makers, and receive with open hands 
the panting fugitives who came to them slaves, 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 457 

and wliom they pass over to us men. These out- 
raged people have demands upon us, though they 
do not know it. They are grateful to us, though 
we only discharge a late duty. We can and 
should recognize their claims. We should pay, 
not give. Liberty is their due. Education is 
their birthright. Withheld, it has not been for- 
feited. More than this, we should urge on our 
soldiers and law-makers to greater deeds. Our 
thoughts should be continually in advance of them, 
though our acts can only follow in their wake. 
Let this idle, brutal, and madly stupid talk of 
fanaticism, and abolition, and emancipation cease. 
Emancipation is the touchstone of this nation. 
By this sign shall it be known whether we work 
the works of God or of the Devil. The govern- 
ment that we ai'e fighting to uphold is not the old 
hulk, dismantled, water-logged, rolling, helpless, 
becalmed, on slavery's dead sea of Sargossa, but a 
new, strong, oaken-ribbed, iron-clad man-of-war, 
with her steam up, her portholes open, her ban- 
ner streaming, bearing down with her whole fire, 
and force, and speed, and strength, upon that 
mystery of iniquity ; and her sealed orders are to 
loose the bonds of the oppressor, and to let the 
oppressed go free. 

What do these men want, — these denouncers 
of fanaticism ? That slavery should be let alone ? 
It Avill not be let alone. It shall not be let alone. 
There is no such thing written in the book of fate. 

20 



458 COUNTRY LIVING. 

All the agitation that has been deprecated and 
denounced for the last thirty, forty, fifty years is 
but a ripple in a wine-glass compared with the 
rage and madness, the sweep and swirl of the 
heaving, seething, boiling ocean-billows that such 
a settlement of the slave-question would stir up. 
The infernal dragon has sown his teeth in every 
valley, on every hill, by every water-course of the 
North, and for every tooth springs up a man, and 
every man a Garrison. For every spirit laid by 
such exorcism shall come seven other spirits sev- 
enty times more rabid with antislavery virus than 
the first. Men talk about saving the country by 
putting down Abolitionism. Have they been 
asleep for these last thirteen months ? Do they 
think the American people is the same people now 
that it was then ? Do they think the old spectre 
of dissolution is going to haunt us again, and the 
old farce of Union-saving to be played over ? 
Are they going to raise storms about the ears of 
Abolitionists, as in the good old times ? 

Yet there is danger just here. Though thou 
shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat, with 
a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from 
him. Folly that is persistent, vigilant, deter- 
mined, is more than a match for wisdom that is 
careless, lazy, and diffusive. Weary of conflict, 
longing for peace, we shall be very apt to declare 
in a general way that slavery has received its 
death-blow from the war, and so relax our efforts 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 459 

and let things work. But a great wrong like 
slavery, that appeals to indolence, and avai'ice, 
and lust, and pride, and every evil passion and 
possibility of the human heart, will stand a good 
many death-blows without dying. It has received 
hard knocks, but if the war stops now, what is 
there to prevent slavery from girding up her loins 
and starting afresh? It is not safe to let things 
work unless you have put them in good working 
order. It spoils the fabric and ruins the ma- 
chinery. You must make things work right, or 
they will work wrong. 

We need not clamor for the immediate abolition 
of slavery. But by all this most costly blood that 
we have poured out on a thrice accursed soil, we 
have a right to demand that no settlement of this 
controversy shall be final, which does not provide 
security for the future as well as indemnity for the 
past. No settlement which merely holds out in- 
ducements to abolition — which merely contem- 
plates the possibilities of emancipation, and provides 
for its contingencies — is enough. Our fathers 
settled it so, and here we are. We want a plan 
laid, landmarks set up, boundary-lines defined, and 
a hand on the wall, visible through all the world, 
writing before the doomed gaze of slavery, " Thus 
far shalt thou go, and no farther ! God hath 
numbered thy kingdom, and finished it ! " We 
want a paved highway through every State, from 
Maine to Texas, on which Wendell Phillips and 



460 COUNTRY LIVING. 

Lloyd Garrison and Beecher and Sumner and 
Lovejoy may go secure, lecturing, as they go, 
to all who choose to hear them. We want the 
scourging of women, the stealing of children, the 
crushing of men, the stifling of free speech, all 
the raving and ravening of the mother of harlots 
and abominations, to cease. A year of agony that 
shall have done this is a year of the right hand 
of the Most High. A thousand years that shall 
have failed to do it are but as the small dust of 
the balance. 

What matters it though we do not yet know 
what shall be done with these freedmen of the 
republic. The best way to find out what future 
duty will be, is to do present duty. Present duty 
is to free the slaves as fast as possible, and educate 
them as fast as they are free, and keep our eyes 
open all the while. If we do not do this, we are 
more guilty than the slaveholders. They did but 
accept slavery thrust upon them. We shall reject 
liberty thrust upon us. God provided himself a 
lamb when he would receive sacrifice. " Who shall 
roll us away the stone from the door of the sepul- 
chre ? " asked the mournful women, for the stone 
was very gi'cat. But when they came to the sep- 
ulchre, lo ! the angel of the Lord had already de- 
scended from heaven, and rolled away the stone. 
So let us go with sweet spices, not to embalm a 
dead, but to anoint a risen Lord, in the person 
of these his little ones. Never fear but that we 



OUR CIVIL WAR. 



461 



shall not only find the stone rolled back, but where 

we looked to see a stark corse and garments of 

the srave, we shall stand face to face with 

an angel, whose countenance shall be 

like lightning, and his raiment 

white as snow ; and so this 

sepulchre of death shall 

be the temple of 

the Lord of 

life. 



Cambridge: Stereotyped and P?mted.by^4EifeIfe)i, Bigelow, & Co. 






11^ Any Books in this list will be sent free of postage, on receipt 
of price. 

Boston, 135 Washington Street, 
AuGOsr, 1862. 

A LIST OF BOOKS 

PUBLISHED BY 

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by TiCKNOR AND FlELDS. 7 

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